The Conversation

Humans light 85% of bushfires, and we do virtually nothing to stop it

Author: Janet Stanley, Associate professor/Principal Research Fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne

It’s hard to comprehend why someone would deliberately light a bushfire. Yet this behaviour regularly occurs in Australia and other countries. We would go a long way to preventing bushfires if we better understood this troubling phenomenon.

Experts estimate about 85% of bushfires are caused by humans. A person may accidentally or carelessly...

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