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Fire is a natural component of Australia’s environment. Plants and animals in many ecosystems have evolved to depend on fires to provide the right conditions for their survival.
There is great diversity of fire regimes across Australia. A fire regime describes what types of fire a particular species or vegetation community needs to remain healthy. Key components of a fire regime include the spatial extent of fires, fire frequency, severity and seasonality.
Fires that occur frequently, or that are too severe can have adverse impacts for a range of vegetation communities and the animals they support.
Equally, a lack of fire can create an unbalance, and sometimes restrict recruitment of plants.
Bush Heritage employs a dedicated National Fire Team which supports Reserve Managers, Ecologists and Aboriginal Partnership Managers to implement fire management work safely and effectively.
Activities include staff training, site-specific fire management and response plans, 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 built assets.
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 fire is introduced.
Through our Aboriginal Partnerships Program we support Traditional Custodian aspirations and participation in decision making processes for conservation outcomes on country. This includes supporting the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be self-determined in activities identified by the Traditional Custodian groups we work with.
We aim to respectfully support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in activities that invigorate and revive cultural knowledge and practice, through knowledge sharing opportunities and cultural revival since colonisation.
Cultural fire practice is a growing area in southern Australia with Aboriginal groups participating in a number of activities on different land tenures working in collaboration with State and Government agencies, and other land managers. This is a two-way process of shared understanding to reinvigorate cultural practice and important for maintaining cultural identity and connection to country.
Our reserve staff and science team individually assess each reserve to combine the most up-to-date understanding of vegetation fire regimes, the latest satellite technology, and the knowledge of partners on the ground (including neighbours and Traditional Custodians) to develop detailed Fire Management Plans.
Our Fire Management Plans aim to enhance each reserve's conservation targets, while reducing the threat of unplanned fire.
Prescribed burns are carried out on reserves and partnership properties under strict weather conditions aimed at achieving specific objectives. In most cases the weather parameters outlined in a Prescribed Burn Plan are selected to create low severity, slow moving fires that extinguish overnight under cool, damp, low wind conditions. Other times prescribed fire is used at a higher intensity to reduce woody thickening, manage weeds, or to provide access for other management actions.
Prescribed burns are used for a variety of reasons:
The tropical savannas are some of the most naturally fire-prone landscapes in the world. The annual wet season rainfall promotes growth of tall grasses that dry out and provide the fuel for fast moving grass fires later in the year. Most fires are ignited by lightning in often remote areas, creating challenges for bushfire suppression.
To overcome this our team implements an annual prescribed burning program; the aim is to create a network of strategic firebreaks that reduce the area burnt by high intensity bushfires as well as protecting our Reserve infrastructure and known cultural sites.
We have partnerships with Aboriginal groups across Arnhem Land, the Kimberley and Cape York, where the careful use of prescribed burns is the most effective tool for conserving biodiversity and cultural sites.
The grassy open woodlands at Yourka and Carnarvon Station Reserve are under threat from bushfires most years. High rainfall and productive land deliver a grassy understorey capable of carrying fire most years.
Without the careful introduction of fire at the right time of year, summer bushfires can spread unchecked wiping out food and cover for fauna, killing mature trees and threatening assets.
Semi-Evergreen Vine Thickets (SEVT) are a threatened ecosystem that was once widespread throughout Queensland. Now, through land-clearing and poor fire management, SEVTs have retreated to a few key strongholds. This ecosystem, and the many flora and fauna species found within, does not tolerate any fire disturbances. A number of newly identified snail species have been located within the SEVT ecosystems found within Carnarvon Station.
In the arid zone fire regimes are directly related to preceding times of above average rainfall. At Ethabuka and Pilungah reserves, the above average rainfall promotes the growth of ephemeral grasses that increase the connectivity between spinifex hummocks. These rainfall events have been historically followed by large landscape-scale bushfires that are difficult to control in the expanse of the desert. This process occurred following good rain in 1975, 2002 and 2010.
The careful introduction of fire during the cooler months will help create areas of low fuel which reserve teams can use to control summer bushfires.
Georgina Gidgee (Acacia georginae) is listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems. It's mainly found within the dune fields and harsher arid environments of Central Australia and the Simpson Desert, more commonly along the Georgina River. It can tolerate a low to moderate intensity fire, often being a refuge for small birds and animals from fire events.
In Southern Australia fire frequencies are lower than in the north, but in denser forests and woodlands fires can be much more intense. The combustibility of vegetation is influenced by climatic conditions such as El Nino- 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 periods of hot, dry conditions, leading to some of the most catastrophic fires in recorded history.
At our reserves in Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales we've been implementing small-scale, ecological and cultural burns to help areas recover from land clearing, maintain, and promote vegetation structure and diversity and to reduce fuel loads. We're reviewing our options as climate change intensifies the challenges.
All our Western Australian reserves are located within the globally recognised South-West WA Biodiversity Hotspot. Unfortunately, most of the vegetation within this Biodiversity Hotspot has been extensively cleared for agriculture, urbanisation and mining, leaving behind a heavily fragmented landscape for native flora and fauna. This fragmentation has dramatically altered the fire regimes in these remnant vegetation communities.
Our dedicated field staff in the Fitz-Stirling, Charles Darwin and Eurardy reserves have begun to implement small-scale, ecological burns, aiming to promote new growth in aging vegetation communities within Proteaceous Heath and Mallee Heath. We've also been collaborating with Traditional Custodians and rangers to undertake small-scale cultural burning on our reserves.
Most unplanned bushfires that occur on our WA reserves are either caused by farm equipment on neighbouring properties (during harvesting operations in particular) or lightning. We've built and maintained a network of fire breaks to mitigate the risk of fire travelling onto our reserves from neighbouring properties (and vice versa).
We use prescribed burning to help minimise the risk of bushfires, but using fire as a land management tool is a risky activity. To help minimise the risk of our prescribed burn program, we've developed a framework that includes assessing and mitigating risks at all phases of fire management.
In 2020 Bush Heritage entered an independent Assurance Program to help align our risk management framework with the International Risk Standard ISO 31000.
Bushfires have no respect for property boundaries and, without effective local collaboration, can adversely impact natural and cultural values along with agricultural land and people’s livelihoods. We work together with neighbours and local stakeholders to ensure that together we’re protecting the landscape.
