Campfire "Discussion" [Split from Three day hike recommendation]

[shane73]

Perhaps without a fire? Imagine if we all lit fires wherever we walked?

Was interesting to observe during my previous trip to McAllister Springs many "camp" fires were lit (about 6 IIRC) but only by elderly walkers. All the youngsters knew better.

[johnf]

"camp" fires were lit (about 6 IIRC) but only by elderly walkers. All the youngsters knew better.

Can you educate this older walker that does not know better.
I would think that a wood fire is carbon neutral provided you are not decreasing the amount of forest whereas a fuel stove is not.
I can see that popular areas will have some reduction in the number of insects where wood is removed from the ground but it is insignificant for the number of people involved in camping with fires across the whole of Australia, what are we talking about? a few hundred hectares with slightly reduced biodiversity in nearly a billion hectare land mass.

[tom_brennan]

I guess we're getting off topic here, but ... from an old post:

In the Blue Mountains, where we mostly walk, large areas of bush burn every ten years or so. The fires of 93/94, 97/98, 01/02 and 02/03 each burned over 500,000 hectares of bush, including large areas in the Blue Mountains. The 02/03 season alone burned nearly 1.5 million hectares across NSW. Perhaps I'm misguided, but I figure I'm just carrying out a bit of fuel reduction!

[shane73]

1. Regarding the carbon neutrality of camp fires: Such claims are idiotic. Somehow I don't think the emissions from camp fires will be tallied during negotiations at COP21 in Paris next year.
Realise -
a) No GHG emissions budget remains
b) The necessary emissions reductions now required to adhere to a 2 degC warming limit (c.f. pre industrial) are incredible given economic inertia, vested interests and the historical context of such reductions
c) The consequences of 2 degC warming or greater demonstrated by paleoclimate evidence are severe to say the least. The expectation of 4 degC warming for example is death of all but 1 billion people this century.
John you don't realise the magnitude of the problem nor the magnitude of the solution, and the latter is certainly slightly greater than the difference between not burning a canister of gas and instead burning some twigs and maybe a log! Good grief. You have some reading and much thinking to do. Don't feel bad, so does almost everyone else here in this land of ignorance and apathy. Australians don't do that science and math stuff anyhow.

2. Regardless of the extent of annual bushfires walkers using campfires leave evidence of their passing. So much for fundamentals then. I'd much rather walk without seeing any evidence of anyone else's passing. I ensure as fully as I can that nobody can tell I passed by. I must admit 90% of the walking I've done has been in Alpine country and I've only walked in the blue mountains a couple of times. Both times I was disgusted and amazed at the litter there so perhaps standards differ, or perhaps the fundamental rules of bushwalking have been forgotten here and there are better websites to discuss this pass time?

[Lindsay]

1. Regarding the carbon neutrality of camp fires: Such claims are idiotic. Somehow I don't think the emissions from camp fires will be tallied during negotiations at COP21 in Paris next year.
Realise -
a) No GHG emissions budget remains
b) The necessary emissions reductions now required to adhere to a 2 degC warming limit (c.f. pre industrial) are incredible given economic inertia, vested interests and the historical context of such reductions
c) The consequences of 2 degC warming or greater demonstrated by paleoclimate evidence are severe to say the least. The expectation of 4 degC warming for example is death of all but 1 billion people this century.
John you don't realise the magnitude of the problem nor the magnitude of the solution, and the latter is certainly slightly greater than the difference between not burning a canister of gas and instead burning some twigs and maybe a log! Good grief. You have some reading and much thinking to do. Don't feel bad, so does almost everyone else here in this land of ignorance and apathy. Australians don't do that science and math stuff anyhow.

2. Regardless of the extent of annual bushfires walkers using campfires leave evidence of their passing. So much for fundamentals then. I'd much rather walk without seeing any evidence of anyone else's passing. I ensure as fully as I can that nobody can tell I passed by. I must admit 90% of the walking I've done has been in Alpine country and I've only walked in the blue mountains a couple of times. Both times I was disgusted and amazed at the litter there so perhaps standards differ, or perhaps the fundamental rules of bushwalking have been forgotten here and there are better websites to discuss this pass time?

This is a bushwalkers website. We can debate the pros and cons of campfires without preaching or describing other POV as 'idiotic'.

[shane73]

Yes I suppose said idiocy was obvious and I didn't need to point it out.

[tom_brennan]

1. Regarding the carbon neutrality of camp fires: Such claims are idiotic.

Yes I suppose said idiocy was obvious and I didn't need to point it out.

Rather than be obnoxious, how about you provide the maths or the evidence. It's not unreasonable for John to suggest that burning the wood releases a similar amount of CO2 to having it decay, albeit over a shorter time period.

Consider how wood is made in the first place: the sun and photosynthesis snatch CO2 out of the air and use the sun's energy to split off the carbon atoms and string them together into wood fiber. That takes energy, which always has the potential to be released. As long as the tree is alive, the wood stays together and carbon is stored.

As soon as the tree dies, microorganisms begin digesting the wood to collect the energy stored there. They break the carbon-to-carbon bonds, use the energy to grow, and this process releases CO2 into the atmosphere as a by-product. The process can take years or even decades, depending on the decay rates in your particular ecosystem.

Funny thing, a campfire does essentially the same thing. Combustion, or burning, breaks those carbon-to-carbon bonds — only this time the energy is released as the lovely light of flames and soothing heat. The process is much faster, taking only as long as it takes to burn the wood.

http://www.nature.org/science-in-action ... r-2010.xml

2. Regardless of the extent of annual bushfires walkers using campfires leave evidence of their passing. So much for fundamentals then.

It's not that hard to rehabilitate a fire. Scatter the ashes widely, cover with local material. It's almost impossible to spot in the country we walk in. We do it when we're out in the wilderness.

[north-north-west]

Consider how wood is made in the first place: the sun and photosynthesis snatch CO2 out of the air and use the sun's energy to split off the carbon atoms and string them together into wood fiber. That takes energy, which always has the potential to be released. As long as the tree is alive, the wood stays together and carbon is stored.

As soon as the tree dies, microorganisms begin digesting the wood to collect the energy stored there. They break the carbon-to-carbon bonds, use the energy to grow, and this process releases CO2 into the atmosphere as a by-product. The process can take years or even decades, depending on the decay rates in your particular ecosystem.

Funny thing, a campfire does essentially the same thing. Combustion, or burning, breaks those carbon-to-carbon bonds — only this time the energy is released as the lovely light of flames and soothing heat. The process is much faster, taking only as long as it takes to burn the wood.

http://www.nature.org/science-in-action ... r-2010.xml

Mmmmm-hmmmm. Ands it's not at all possible for a rapid artificial process instead of a slow natural process to be harmful? Plus, burning the timber denies all those micro-organisms their meal. It also denies hiding places for a myriad of small critters that live in or under dead and decaying timber. It's an unnecessary alteration to the natural process of growth, death and decay. The detrimental impact of a carefully tended and suitably rehibilitated fire may be small, but it still exists and every additional fire adds to it.

[tom_brennan]

It may be rapid, but fire is certainly a natural process in the context of the Australian environment. The aboriginal people had fires for thousands of years before the arrival of white man. Most of the SE of Australia is fire prone, and indeed some of the vegetation is fire dependent.

And you can't really ignore the elephant in the room: bushfire. As I mentioned earlier, hundreds of thousands of hectares are burnt almost every year, with more than a million in some seasons.

Hell, the RFS has 34 hazard reduction burns planned for just the next week alone (and they've been running them from May). Any single one of those is many campfires, sometimes thousands. There are 50 fires currently burning in NSW.

I agree that there may be an impact to having a campfire, but I'm interested in seeing it quantified compared to the other fire related processes that already go on in our environment.

You can also reduce your impact on small critters by using the right sort of wood. Don't use large branches, rotten wood or wood that has been lying directly on the ground for long periods. Just use small thin sticks, ideally those that have fallen against other trees or bushes so will be drier. Your fire will burn better and cleaner. If you burn large logs, you are far more likely to have insects and spiders come crawling out when you put them on the fire.

[shane73]

1. Leave only footprints, take only photos. It's not hard. Expecting all walkers who light fires to scatter ashes and camouflage the scar is silly since skill and care will vary. There's only one reliable method: Leave only footprints, take only photos.

2. Furthermore, the actions of the RFS and whomever else can't be used to justify the actions of bushwalkers.

3. In regards to emissions, these two videos from the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change provide context:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/events/2012/194.html
http://vimeo.com/album/2648454/video/81836152

[DaveNoble]

1. Regarding the carbon neutrality of camp fires: Such claims are idiotic.

Burning wood on a fire is carbon neutral. You seem to have a bit of a misunderstanding of some basic science here. The same as burning ethanol, but not fossil fuels - such as gas or petrol.

As Tom says - it should be possible to educate bushwalkers to leave their campfire showing no trace of it. This may be difficult in high use areas and alpine areas - and often in those places - the land managers encourage or mandate the use of fuel stoves. I think this is sensible.

And there are other bad aspects of campfires - such as walkers trying to burn aluminium foil.

I have recently been to campsites where there have been live trees chopped down and bags of rubbish dumped. We try and educate walkers not to do this. We don't always succeed but it is still worth trying. So - the same should (and often) does apply to leaving no trace campfires (and this is certainly encouraged in bushwalking clubs that I am familiar with).

Regarding impacts on climate change - I would think that the impact on using a fuel stove rather than a fire would be minimal compared to the fossil fuel you use getting to the start of the bushwalk and in processing your food (e.g. dehydrating food seems to use a lot of electricity)

Dave

[icefest]

I think it's also important to note that not all Australian biomes are adapted to regular bushfires. In these regions, a fire scar will last much longer and firewood removal will have a much larger impact.
While this may not be the case in a blue gum forest, it is an important fact that is often overlooked in camp planning.

[DaveNoble]

1. Leave only footprints, take only photos. It's not hard.

I think this cliche is a bit simplistic and outmoded. Like another - "Bash, burn and bury" (that applied to tin cans a many decades ago).

Footprints are an impact - and can be very bad. Just look at a track that has been eroded by the passage of many feet. In Tasmania a lot of the alpine tracks have had to be hardened (using rocks, corduroying or duckboard) to reduced the impact of footprints. Getting back slightly to the topic - the track up Mt Solitary has experienced very bad erosion due to walker impacts.

And photos also have an impact. Photos can encourage greater visitation to a place - especially to places that look beautiful or spectacular. Wilderness photographers have to consider this impact. One way to reduce the impact is to caption a photo as "Lake in South West Tasmania" rather than give the name of the lake.

Dave

[shane73]

So now we must levitate across the bush and leave cameras at home? The idea is to have *minimum* impact, not no impact which is impossible. Again I stress that trying to educate walkers in the manner with which they should "clean up" evidence of their campfire is silly because such exercise is unreliable and adds unnecessary complication. It's far more reliable to simply only have a *minimum* impact: Leave only footprints, take only photos.

And for Heaven's sake, cease being concerned about the carbon neutrality of campfires (yes I understand the concept Dave but I argue it's moot); it's an academic point, it's a nothing. If you realise the demands of trying to limit warming we now face you should realise this. Are you going to sit by your campfire at night enjoying the aroma of smoke feeling pleased that you're not emitting any carbon by burning gas? Surely not? Mankind emits about 10 billion tons of carbon annually and we've left change so late that -
1. At best we only have about a 66% chance of limiting warming to two degrees C. A 90% chance is now impossible (as detailed by the CSIRO)
2. In order to do this, if the developing world is allowed to peak their emissions in 2025 and decline at about 6% p.a. then the developed world (yes that's us) must reduce our emissions at about 10% p.a. now! (but we'll continue to suggest our country can play no meaningful role - this is a lie in light of the concept by which we must do everything we can now to allow the developing world time to develop and change later, and especially in light of our coal exports).
3. Emissions are not reducing. The developed world would first have to stop and then decline.
4. Historical examples of emissions reductions have been Sweden and France in the 1980s who achieved -4 to -5% p.a. for a few years and -7% p.a. was achieved when the Soviet Union collapsed. Globally society must now do what has never been achieved before - worldwide emission reductions and at a rate never before achieved by any country. Now now now.
5. Each day that passes with business as usual places greater demands on us. Soon the door will be shut.
6. The consequences of 3 or 4 degC warming are horrific and soon (if not already) we'll be on a pathway to such warming. It will be impossible to avoid. You can forget about your grandchildren ever going bushwalking. Hopefully they'll have food.

Oh but we'll sit about and worry about whether our campfire is carbon neutral? WT *$&#?

The negatives outweigh the positives: The advantage of claims such as a campfire being carbon neutral are far outweighed by the mess that may be left for other walkers to see, the potential for trees to be cut and the removal of logs from the surrounding bush.

"Carbon neutrality", "carbon offsets" etc are all cons created by commerce to pull the wool over your eyes and to allow them to continue business; if emissions must decline immediately and drastically then you can't warrant "offsetting" an emission source with an emissions sink elsewhere. That emission sink will not sequester carbon rapidly enough and if it could, it should be done anyway.

Leave only footprints, Take only photos. I would argue MORE relevant now than ever before.

It's not hard.

[DaveB]

And this has what to do with a request for advice for a 3 day walk location? Way to hijack a thread and hop on your soapbox.

[shane73]

Oh no, the End is nigh!

[Allchin09]

1. Leave only footprints, take only photos. It's not hard. Expecting all walkers who light fires to scatter ashes and camouflage the scar is silly since skill and care will vary. There's only one reliable method: Leave only footprints, take only photos.

Shane73 - Regarding campfires on bushwalks in NSW, I will point you in the direction of the Bushwalkers' Code produced by Bushwalking NSW. http://www.bushwalkingnsw.org.au/bushwa ... 04-021.pdf

[tom_brennan]

1. Regarding the carbon neutrality of camp fires: Such claims are idiotic.

Oh but we'll sit about and worry about whether our campfire is carbon neutral? WT *$&#?

Shane, the only reason we've been arguing the carbon neutrality of campfires is because you claimed that it was "idiotic"...

[tasadam]

This topic up to here is generated from removed posts from the topic Three day hike recommendation

A reminder to all to read rule 21.
http://www.bushwalk.com/rules.php
Sure would save us a lot of time.

[shane73]

Oh thank goodness this now has it's own thread... Ummm, it's just an internet forum for Heaven's sake.

Anyhow, Brennan, something must be lost in translation; I still claim it's idiotic. Idiotic to consider carbon neutrality on this scale. It's also idiotic to light one in consideration of the remains, in consideration of the damage to the local environment and in consideration to the bushfire danger.

As for the so called Bushwalker's Code, I claim the advice detailing fire is wrong.
Someone should fix the spelling of 'In',or better yet, delete the entire section and replace it with advice not to light campfires.

So lame...

[perfectlydark]

It does recommend not to light fires if you read it properly

[slparker]

Lighting a fire is a terrible scar on the wilderness. i can't believe that any modern enlightened walker could consider leaving ash to be scattered in the bush - what a hideous blight on the purity of nature.

Because we should only leave steps as our trace in the wilderness...

in-the-mud-south-coast-track-tasmania-480x323.jpg (51.84 KiB) Viewed 22247 times

That's what I'm talking about... no campfires here! Just a man in the wilderness leaving no trace....

[peregrinator]

SW Tasmania is a rather atypical case, is it not?

I've seen perhaps 100 campfire remains for every one smallish bog in Vic, SA and NSW. And they were probably caused by motor vehicles.

The vegetation in the photograph might not be much use for fire-making anyway!

[neilmny]

Perhaps without a fire? Imagine if we all lit fires wherever we walked?

Was interesting to observe during my previous trip to McAllister Springs many "camp" fires were lit (about 6 IIRC) but only by elderly walkers. All the youngsters knew better.

It troubles me that your concern is only about campfires which I appreciate is the topic you created, but how did you get to McAllister springs shane73 I hope you walked from South Aus or rode a bicycle.

[whitefang]

It's about minimising impact. You don't have to light fires and I'm not sure about other states but in SA if you want a fire you need to bring your own wood. Comparing mud to fires is apples and oranges. Mud can't be helped but our impact can be minimised by walking through it rather than around and spreading the track and mud.

[north-north-west]

It's about minimising impact. You don't have to light fires ...

That's the whole point.
The only way to have zero impact is not to go there. But if you do go, there's a responsibility to cause the least possible disturbance. Fires are not necessary, they're inefficient for cooking and stoves are so light and compact these days even the UL brigade can't justify using a fire instead. So it's all about the 'habit', 'psychological comfort' and 'entertainment' factors. In other words, it's preference, not necessity - a preference we should have outgrown by now.

[neilmny]

Well said NNW.

[slparker]

It's about minimising impact. You don't have to light fires and I'm not sure about other states but in SA if you want a fire you need to bring your own wood. Comparing mud to fires is apples and oranges. Mud can't be helped but our impact can be minimised by walking through it rather than around and spreading the track and mud.

For what it's worth I would almost never light fires but my mate lit a fire on the beach at cox's bight on the south coast track using driftwood last time i walked it. I'm very sure that the impact of this fire could not have been greater than the kilo's of faeces and the damage to the bush of a party of three passing through.

It's absurd to pontificate about a fire when the bush is scarred by thousands of boots passing through it. The worst thing is that most contributors to this forum seem completely unaware of the incongruency of this thinking. The question we should be asking is: what is the total impact whenever I choose to walk in the bush. The impact from a fire is likely to be less, both aesthetically and environmentally, than the impact of boots and faeces. We've just learnt to associate a campfire with irresponsibility.

Of course the additional problem of a campfire AND boots AND faeces is a greater contribution to our impact on the environment but a fire per se is not a Great Evil.

if we really gave a s&*t about the bush, and our impact, we would limit our use of it.

[north-north-west]

Of course the additional problem of a campfire AND boots AND faeces is a greater contribution to our impact on the environment but a fire per se is not a Great Evil.

Ingenuous, given that the campfire does not occur without the boots and faeces and whatever other impact those lighting it have. Which, again, is the crux of the matter. Putting our feet on the ground and $#!+ing are unavoidable; a campfire is not.

[slparker]

Of course the additional problem of a campfire AND boots AND faeces is a greater contribution to our impact on the environment but a fire per se is not a Great Evil.

Ingenuous, given that the campfire does not occur without the boots and faeces and whatever other impact those lighting it have. Which, again, is the crux of the matter. Putting our feet on the ground and $#!+ing are unavoidable; a campfire is not.

That isn't the crux of the matter.

You have to look at the impact of the walk as a whole not just a party lighting a fire as a great moral outrage in and of itself. There are some walks that shouldn't be done because the ground is over-used and over walked and over-shat. It's preferable for a party to walk and light a fire in a low impact zone than it is for a walker to walk through an over-used area, all else being equal.
Just pronouncing against all campfires by all people is sanctimonious and ignores the real impact by those who preach low-impact walking but do real harms by their presence in the bush.

Of course it is preferable that most people ought not light campfires most of the time in most areas - but there are instances where a campfire is not only of negligible impact but is not even aesthetically of concern. railing against a campfire just because it is a campfire makes no sense at all.