Team spark
Teamwork, firebreaks and prescribed burning protects Yourka Reserve. Meet Team Spark – a group of Bush Heritage supporters making a difference.
Fire has shaped the evolution of Australia’s landscapes and native species over millions of years.
There’s great diversity in the frequency and severity of fires across Australia. Influences include both human intervention and natural factors such as changes in vegetation patterns and fluctuations in weather and climate.
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A grass tree regenerating at Reedy Creek Reserve Photo: Steve Heggie.
Our Fire Management Program includes staff training, site-specific fire management and response plans, assessing and managing fuel loads, creating fire breaks, managing access tracks and coordinating with neighbours.
This preparation helps us respond to and control summer bushfires, helping reduce their intensity and safeguarding ecological, cultural and structural assets.
Improving our processes based on lessons learned is a key focus.
‘Right-way’ fire
Aboriginal people have managed fire regimes for thousands of years and continue to manage large parts of Australia through the careful use of fire.
Strict cultural protocols around burning were once common and today many of our partnerships with Aboriginal groups maintain these protocols through the role of elders in determining where and when controlled burns are used.
Historically fire was an important tool to maintain plant and animal species that people relied on for survival. Parts of the North Kimberley (where we have a partnership with Wunambal Gaambera) are among the only places in Australia to record no small mammal extinctions. Here plant and animal communities still rely on small, low-severity burns carried out under Aboriginal stewardship.
One of the best tools to combat bushfires is fire itself. Quite literally, fighting fire with fire.
In addition to natural fire regimes there are many contemporary threats including arson, climate change, land clearing and land degradation (primarily from agriculture).
Invasive grasses such as Buffel (Cenchrus ciliaris) and Gamba grass (Andropogon gayanus) significantly increase the bushfire risk across large areas.
Fire management planning
There’s no ‘one-size fits all’ approach to fire management. Every landscape is unique, and so is the potential impact of bushfire.
Our reserve staff and science team individually assess every property. We combine the latest satellite technology with the knowledge of partners on the ground (including neighbours and Traditional Custodians) to map key conservation targets and threats.
Northern Australia
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Controlling a tactical backburn at Yourka's December 2019 bushfire.
The tropical savannas are some of the most naturally fire-prone landscapes in the world. The annual ‘dry season’ leaves the landscape tinder dry at the hottest time of the year and lightning regularly starts bushfires.
We have partnerships with Aboriginal groups across Arnhem Land, the North Kimberley and Cape York, where the careful use of prescribed burns is the most important tool for conserving biodiversity and cultural sites.
Southern Australia
In Southern Australia fire frequencies have been lower but in denser forests and woodlands can be much more intense. The combustibility of vegetation is influenced by climatic conditions such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and the Southern Annular mode. Above-average rainfalls that promote growth and increase fuel loads can be followed by extended hot, dry conditions.
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Regeneration of temperate wet sclerophyll forest after fire, Liffey River Reserve. Photo Wayne Lawler/EcoPix.
At our reserves in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and in southern Western Australia we’ve been implementing ecological burns to help areas recover from land clearing, to maintain vegetation structure and diversity and to reduce fuel loads. We’re reviewing our options as global warming intensifies the challenges.
Arid zone
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Glen Norris implements a controlled burn at Ethabuka Reserve. Photo Sajidah Abdhullah.
In the arid zone fire frequency and severity is directly related to above-average rainfalls that can lead to prolific growth in grass and vegetation. Our Ethabuka and Pilungah reserves, on the edge of the Simpson Desert in Queensland, experienced large rainfall events in 2016 and 2017.
We responded to reduce the risk of bushfire through strategic prescribed burns over relatively small areas.
We also have the Birriliburu partnership in the Little Sandy and Gibson Deserts of WA, where we work closely with senior Martu Traditional Custodians and rangers to plan and implement prescribed burns.
Controlled burns
The difference between proactive, controlled burns and uncontrolled bushfires is stark. It’s often the difference between life and death for native species.
Controlled burns are carried out in cooler conditions, often after recent rainfall, to create slow-moving, low-severity fires in carefully selected areas with appropriate vegetation communities.
On our reserves we work closely with our ecologists and the latest research to recreate a mosaic pattern of fire histories, which supports biodiversity and fire-sensitive plant and animal species. These controlled burns in cool conditions can reduce fuel build-up and help control weeds.
Bushfires often start in hot, dry, windy weather and can quickly reach into tree canopies, destroying nesting hollows and food sources, killing small mammals and devastating ecosystems.
We also create strategic fire breaks that help control prescribed burns and can restrict the spread and movement of large bushfires.
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A large bushfire in the Kimberley. Photo Ross Bray.
The impact of bushfires can be confronting. Millions of animals perish, and the ones that survive are left without crucial cover and susceptible to predators – especially cats.
Fire management is collaborative
Bushfires have no respect for property borders and can burn out cattle stations and agricultural land, impacting pastoral livelihoods as well.
We work together with neighbours and local stakeholders to ensure that together we’re protecting the landscape. With approval from the local fire authorities, we conduct controlled burns on reserves with strict supervision by reserve managers, and the support and on-ground assistance (where required) of relevant park or fire agencies.
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Mat McLean at Reedy Creek Reserve, helping QLD parks and the local fire brigade implement controlled burns.
How the land responds
When burning is skilfully carried out it can reinvigorate ageing vegetation communities, encourage flowering and seeding and provide a flush of new green shoots and nutritious small herbs for grazing wildlife.
By strategically burning small areas we build complexity into the vegetation over successive seasons. After some years this creates patches of bush at different stages of regeneration that can provide the resources animals need, no matter what the season.
Fire Stories
