Kevin Tolhurst
The passing on Thursday of forest scientist and Associate Professor Kevin Tolhurst AM is with much regret. By David Packham OAM and John Cameron
Kevin was an expert in wildfire behaviour, prescribed burning techniques and guidelines, ecological management of landscapes, fire risk management, and ecological impacts of fire.
Victorian bushfire policy and practise is hopelessly misguided and appallingly bad and based on shonky science steeped in ideology. Against misguided political, ideological and bureaucratic impediments, Kevin continued to deliver real science and practical management options.
His last message to a gathering at Mallacoota on 5 October was, that if appropriate fuel reduction had been applied prior to the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfire, Mallacoota would not have burned.
At a 2022 ‘International Association of Wildland Fire’ Conference, Keven offered more words of wisdom:
- “Bushfire policy needs to be driven by rigorous science underpinning (the) politics.” However, “politics has dominated the fire world for several decades and is based on perceptions and beliefs.”
- “The political approach has major problems with long term vision and (with) solutions to long term issues. Unlike politics, the approach of science was based on evidence, known assumptions, with the process repeatable and objective. The science approach is not based on thoughts and opinions, which does dominate some science.”
- “Some peer-reviewed papers in scientific literature did not cut the mustard and were very poor from a scientific point of view.”
- “Impediments to a successful bushfire management policy included social and political focus on response and recovery, (and) not (enough focus on) prevention, preparedness and fire regime management. It‘s like trying to improve public health (just) by buying more ambulances.”
- “It is not more research that is needed, but greater efforts to use the knowledge we have.”
Kevin’s passing is a huge loss to rational bushfire research and practical fire mitigation policy. Kevin tried to expose “the sneaky buggers” and their flawed Victorian bushfire policy. The tin eared government and bureaucrats failed to listen and instead put their spin doctors to work. With time the ‘Safer Together’ bushfire policy will morph into ‘Scorched Together’.
The risk of catastrophic bushfire in Victoria is eminent with many homes and lives likely to be lost. There will be a proper royal commission and enough rational people around to bring the government negligence to account, making use of Kevin’s research and his words of wisdom.
