| Bush Heritage News | Spring 2007 | |
 Burning along the track. PHOTO: STEVE HEGGIE |
||||||
| Using fire at Reedy Creek Reserve Reserve Manager Steve Heggie explains the fire management work at Reedy Creek Reserve |
||||||
| In 2004 Bush Heritage received
a gift of 452 hectares of remnant
vegetation and coastal habitats in one
of Queensland’s prime coastal zones.
The gift was an environmental offset
for the environmentally sustainable
residential development ‘Sunrise
at 1770’. The residents contribute
financially to support the protection of
the adjacent conservation area, Reedy
Creek Reserve. Managing land adjacent to such a development creates unique management issues, particularly when it comes to ecological burning. Burning, however, continues to be a major focus of the work program at Reedy Creek Reserve. |
||||||
  |
 |
Over this summer wet season, which
never really arrived, we maintained and
widened the firebreaks in preparation
for the autumn burns we were to
undertake as part of the Reedy Creek
fire management strategy. This was
necessary for our own safety and also to
increase our efficiency when using fire
as a management tool. All Bush Heritage reserve staff who work with fire are now equipped with Australian Standard Proban Personal Protection Equipment, designed to offer a high level of protection from radiant heat and flames. The onset of the calmer autumn weather saw our burning program begin but, as a result of the poor wet season, conditions were much drier and more challenging than normal. Our fire management has two objectives. One is to protect life and property in the Sunrise at 1770 residential area by reducing the overall fuel loads on the common lands. Our second aim is to create a mosaic of burnt and unburnt areas on the reserve to mimic the natural order of fire and enhance the health of the local vegetation communities. This means that patches of some robust vegetation communities are burnt as regularly as every two years. Other vegetation communities will need at least ten years between burns. Ensuring that the fire remains within control lines, and reassuring anxious neighbours, creates a very challenging management scenario for Bush Heritage staff who use fire as a land-management tool on the urban fringe. Once the burns are complete we map the blackened areas using Geographic Positioning System equipment, and the data are added to the Geographic Information System database to produce detailed digital maps of the reserve’s fire history. These maps guide the selection of the sites for following years’ burns. Now we are heading into winter, the traditional period of high fire danger, well prepared. |
||||
| From top: Monitoring the controlled burn. PHOTOS: STEVE HEGGIE | ||||||
|
||||||