Sydney

The bushfires that have raged across New South Wales are fuelling arguments over the Australian government's approach to fire research.

The fires have consumed around half a million hectares of bush and forest, prompting calls from ecologists for more work on measures such as controlled burn, which, they say, could help to limit the bushfire problem.

Currently, the government spends around A$2 million (US$1 million) each year on bushfire research — half of which goes to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and the rest to universities.

The small team at the CSIRO is already claiming some success in garnering information that may have saved lives during this summer's fires. And the team's leader, Jim Gould, says that a six-year study in Western Australia has yielded better information on the rate that fires spread under different wind conditions.

But Phil Cheney, who founded the CSIRO's bushfire research team, has long campaigned for more fires to be lit under controlled conditions to reduce fuel levels in the bush. He points out that fire is natural in Australia, but that fuel now accumulates to dangerous levels so that the resultant fires “burn much more intensively”.

Len Foster, chief executive of the Australasian Fire Authorities Council, says a concerted attempt to add to Australia's fire knowledge foundered last year, when a consortium led by Melbourne and Monash universities failed to win funding for a Cooperative Research Centre dedicated to the topic. Gould says that the project failed because too few state fire authorities offered to match the federal government's support.

Science minister Peter McGauran concedes that Australia could “make a bigger effort than we are at present” in bushfire research, and promises to revisit the merits of the project.