"My old wildlife professor used to say, forestry is not rocket science. It's ten times more complicated. The misconception, once you go and burn it, that's it, the forest is gone. Well, it simply isn't true; there's a whole set of natural processes, it's evolved over millennia that eucalypt forest burns from time to time and it burns incredibly hot. Animals know how to move away from smoke, and then they know how to recolonise back. Plants have seeds that get ground-stored and then released during a fire, and so the biodiversity comes back and that probably is the biggest misconception – once you've done it, then you can't have it back. Nothing could be further from the truth."