There were claims during the bushfire season of 2019/2020 that a lack of hazard reduction burning might have exacerbated the severity of the fires. But landscape flammability expert Philip Zylstra said claims of a lack of prescribed burning were "completely false'. He said such burning had in fact increased. "In NSW, the last decade has seen more than twice the amount of prescribed burning compared to the decade before and in all mapped records of prescribed burning across NSW national parks it's the highest decade," he claimed. Dr Zylstra's statement is a fair call. His claim resulted from an analysis of NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service fire data mapped against national park boundaries. Experts said this was an appropriate way to see how much national parkland in NSW had been subjected to prescribed burns. An independent analysis of the same data showed hazard reduction burning within national park boundaries increased 2.3 times ' more than double ' in the decade to 2018-19 compared with the preceding 10 years. The analysis also showed a larger area of national parkland was burned over the course of the decade than in any preceding decade. Further, the numbers showed all prescribed burning covered by the NPWS data, including burns outside national park boundaries, also increased 1.9 times when comparing the two most recent 10-year periods.
Verdict: Fair call