The destruction of tender plants and evergreen trees by fire and the nurturance of plants that are tough and high in oils seems like a recipe for fire.

One problem is though that in much of Australia* we’ve had tens of thousands of years of people modifying the (presumably biased towards flammable to start off with) environment through repeated fires, so we already have an awful lot of vegetation that’s adapted to a regime of regular fire.

* Exceptions that come to mind are rainforests and alpine areas, which must not have been burnt often since the vegetation in these places doesn’t cope with fire well.

Sounds a pretty good use case for an electric truck; low speeds with constant stop/start driving is well suited to electric vehicles and a known route means range is much less of an issue (just spec it with enough to cope with expected decline over its service life and you’re set). The harder part will be making sure there’s enough charging capacity in the depots to cope with a fleet of trucks, I would expect upgrades will be necessary for that.

In the conditions in which you’re jumping into one of these you don’t really want much ventilation - too much heat/smoke, and potentially even the fire burning through some of the oxygen from the contained air. Underground might not be an ideal place to be but IMO it’s likely the best of a set of bad choices if you can’t get out ahead of time - dirt is a pretty good thermal insulator.

Better be quick, I hear you have to deal with that sort of problem within 3-5 minutes…

Seems like people should stop spending effort on finding a good walking stick mid walk and instead just look around at the start of the track for one that was good enough for someone else to bring all the way back…

It took an unfortunately long time (until I clicked through to the article) for me to realise it wasn’t a real snake under discussion here…

It certainly seems like there has been less snow days and higher minimum snow altitudes this winter around the ACT.

No Gang Gang cockatoo? Not happy Jan!

Luckily though my backup option of the Black Cockatoo is still in the running.

I was prepared to be annoyed if the Gang Gang wasn’t in the list, but luckily the superior rusty gargling noise is in fact present.

What animals do they hope to kill?

Non native pest species such as feral dogs/cats, foxes, wild pigs, and rabbits.

I’ve walked around the old mine site there, the bare earth and orange and green colouring is certainly different - really not a place you want to drink the water.