The hills around Bellingen could burn for a year...

NSW Forestry Corporation will log, bulldoze and burn Tarkeeth State Forest. “Residents have been told by Forestry Corporation that waste vegetation would be bulldozed into windrows and burnt over a period of a year or more...Imagine the smoke pollution right across the Valley." (source)

Study indicates 'biomass burning' may play larger role in climate change than previously realized. "Based on aircraft observations, satellite data and models, the findings indicate 'biomass burning' may need to be addressed with future regulations. Following closely after COP21, the results could suggest a need to look at other sources of greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to industrial activities and fossil fuel combustion in industrialized nations." (source)

Smoke - "Globally around 340,000 deaths per year are thought to be attributable to the additional pollution from landscape fires. Ending deforestation by burning would have many benefits, not only for global climate and biodiversity but for human health too." (source)

Measuring air quality/ NSW clean air legislation EPA NSW

Smoke and dust sensors. Open source technology for citizens:
Low-cost sensors to measure air quality. Monitor the air you breathe. Nature 09.01.2015


Links:
The hills around Bellingen could 'burn for a year', Bellingen Courier, 22.02.2016

University of Maryland. "Fires burning in Africa, Asia cause high ozone in tropical Pacific: Study indicates 'biomass burning' may play larger role in climate change than previously realized." ScienceDaily, 13.01.2016. 

World Pollutionwatch: Wildfires can kill – far from the flames, Guardian, 31.08.2015

 Hazard reduction burning kills 

Updates:
Tracking forest degradation regarding carbon emissions. Amazon Satellite alerts track deforestation in real time, nature 23.02.2016 

How Forest Loss Is Leading To a Rise in Human Disease, Yale Environment 360, 23.02.2016

Land-clearing surge in Queensland set to wipe out Direct Action gains – report Guardian 29.02.2016

'Like a scene from a doomsday sci-fi movie': Flames burn through Tarkeeth Forest, Bellingen Courier, 24.04.2017

Image:
Eugene von Guérard, Bush fire between Mount Elephant and Timboon, 1857

Freshwater Ecosystems and Cattle

"Today it's simply socially unacceptable to let stock in rivers; people view it in the same way as it's unacceptable to smoke in restaurants"  Conservation group raises alarm over river protection, 22.02.2016  

Image:
Bellingen graffiti: Cattle standing in the Bellinger river

Livestock grazing of riparian vegetation #1

The Control of Fire by Birds

Early humans are seen as inventors of fire technology. Now birds of prey such as the the Brown Falcon (Falco berigora) and the Black Kite (Milvus migrans) join the list of those propagating fires deliberately in the Australian savanna woodlands.

Many birds benefit from anthropogenic fires or lightning fires, but narratives of ornithogenic fires have for a long time survived in legends and ceremony in many places around the world.

"Fire provides the opportunity for pyrophilic behaviour by some birds. Brown Falcons, Falco berigora, perch at the fire-front waiting for grasshoppers, frogs, snakes, lizards and small mammals.

Local Aboriginal people believe that Black Kites set fires by carrying burning sticks to new locations and drop them into dry grass on unburnt grounds...I have seen a hawk pick up a smouldering stick in its claws and drop it in a fresh patch of dry grass half a mile away, then wait with its mates for the mad exodus of scorched and frightened rodents and reptiles.

“When that area was burnt out the process was repeated elsewhere. We call these fires Jarulan.”

There is an extensive body of recorded material – some over 100 years old – of Aboriginal myths and legends relating to birds and fire from across Australia." (Source)

 
Sources:
Ornithogenic Fire: Raptors as Propagators of Fire in the Australian Savanna, Bob Gosford, Crikey
Ethnoornithology focuses on the intersection of birds & human cultural diversity.


Image:
Kalila and Dimna, The Fables of Bidpai,  The owls are burned to death by the crows. Syrian unknown master, 1310.
- The animal fables Panchatantra were originally composed in Sanskrit around the 3rd century BCE
- Ramsay Wood believes that these fables provide one of the earliest secular examples of what Lawrence Lessig calls Remix Culture.