Dialogue on forest fires

Forty-four people gathered at Noojee recently to talk about forest fires, impact on communities and forests, and the role of fire in forest management.

The group met at a high vantage point in Neerim North to get a landscape perspective of the immense area the forest covers.

Kurnai elder Aunty Cheryl Drayton spoke to the group about the indigenous people's connection to the land, the influence of geology, post-colonial human activity and forest fires on the landscape.

Moving on to a private forested block, the group heard about a landowner who used fire carefully, as one of many measures to protect his home from bushfires.

The group then travelled through a mixture of long unburnt forest of Mountain Ash, a mosaic of post-logging regeneration of various ages, and a recent DEECA fuel reduction burn adjacent to farmland.

The day was convened by Gippsland Forest Dialogue (GFD), an organisation that seeks to bring together people with different views, experiences and connections to the forest.
The Noojee field trip was run concurrently with a field trip at Bairnsdale ahead of the GFD's Fire Dialogue at The Knob Reserve near Stratford on Saturday.
An underlying theme for the fire dialogue was the exploration of four propositions: fire is natural, fire is dangerous, fire is useful and fire is changing.