Critique: Bowman study on Tasmania logging linksFriday 24 Apr 2026
Except when you look at the actual science, there is no such proof. What these stories rely on is a familiar pattern. They take a handful of studies, mostly based on satellite mapping of fire severity, assumptions about forest age and modelling of fire behaviour, and then present the results as if they demonstrate a clear causal link between logging and fire. They don’t. In most cases, what is actually being measured is stand age, not logging. Young forests don’t just come from logging, they also come from wildfire. In fact, many of the dense regrowth forests blamed for increased fire risk are the direct result of previous fires. So what is being presented as “logging makes forests more flammable” is often just “disturbed forests behave differently after disturbance”. That is not the same thing. Even the Tasmanian research these claims rely on admits there is limited empirical data, conflicting results and heavy reliance on modelling. Yet the media headline jumps straight to “proof”. The authors acknowledge weather plays a major role, yet the narrative shifts the blame onto logging because it suits the broader campaign against native forestry. And perhaps most telling of all, there is little or no acknowledgement that large areas of unlogged national parks burn at high severity under the same conditions. Because that inconvenient fact undermines the storyline. This is not how science should inform policy. It is how advocacy repackages selective evidence into a simple, compelling message. The reality is far more complex. Fire behaviour depends on fuel, weather, topography and suppression. Reducing it to a single cause might make for a good headline. But it won’t lead to better forest management. Contributed by Robert Onfray  | ||
Copyright 2004-2026 © Innovatek Ltd. All rights reserved. |
