The importance of fire management
Figure 1: Australian Fire History 1997 – 2003
Rangelands are important landscapes to
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians for
cultural, social and historical reasons. They have
high economic value. They support the mining,
tourism, meat and wool production industries,
as well as small and emerging industries such
as ‘bush tucker’ production.
Fire is a feature of the rangelands. In the less
populated rangelands of northern Australia, fires
are frequent and large areas are burnt every year
(see Figure 1). In the rangelands of central and
southern Australia, fires occur approximately
every decade, often after years of unusually
high rainfall.
Fire plays an important role throughout most of
the rangelands. Together with control of animal
stocking rates, it is the major tool available for
land management in the rangelands and can
meet a range of land management objectives.
It can help maximise biodiversity, protect fire
sensitive habitats and culturally significant sites,
manage woody weeds, and increase pastoral
productivity.
6 | Fire management
Although fire is an important management tool,
there are many gaps in our knowledge of how it
can and should be used. We know that if used
poorly, fire can degrade ecosystems and reduce
productivity. It can contribute to increased soil
erosion, expansion of weed and feral animal
populations, reduced water quality, increased soil
salinity, decline in native plant communities,
and—through impacts on threatened species,
heritage areas and significant wetlands—
decreased biodiversity. Understanding how fire
affects biodiversity in the rangelands is therefore
a topic of national importance.
Effective fire management means understanding
both the human resource as well as the natural
resource. It depends on having collaborative
networks, fostering active participation, learning
through practical experience, and establishing
effective means of communication. Using the
“Three Cs”—building capacity, engaging the
community, and fostering cooperation—ensures
that fire is an effective tool in achieving
sustainable rangelands regions.
Fire ecology of rangelands systems
Fire regimes and fire ecology
Australia’s fire regions
Fires are recurrent disturbances in most
landscapes. The effect of fire on the ecology of
the landscape is mostly shaped by fire regimes—
the pattern of fires, including extent, seasonality,
frequency, intensity, and patchiness of fires—and,
to a lesser extent, by individual fire events.
Fire regimes are driven by more than climate.
Factors such as land use play a vital role.
However, Australia has three major fire/
climate regions:
The fire regime of a landscape is determined by
a range of factors and interactions including:
– the semi-arid and arid interior
– the human, physical, and biological
characteristics of the landscape; these,
along with weather and fuel characteristics,
influence the chance of ignition and the
speed and extent of spread
– the sequence of individual fires, including
the characteristics and timing of each fire
– the time elapsed between fires, which
influences the recovery of the landscape
and its species composition
– the spectrum of potential different fire regimes
as determined by the number and size of fires
as well as factors such as the weather
– the wet-dry tropical savanna region
– the southern temperate zone
Most of Australia’s rangelands are located
within the tropical savannas and the semiarid/arid interior.
The wet-dry tropical savanna region
Landscape-scale fires occur annually.
Fuels, such as grasses and herbs, accumulate
during the wet season. During the dry season,
the fuels cure and there are spells of moderate
to extreme fire weather. Fires can also be ignited
by people and by lightning. Fires tend to occur
in the dry season months of May to December.
Fire management | 7
The semi-arid and arid interior
Biodiversity and fire
Landscape-scale fires occur episodically, typically
at intervals of up to a decade. Extensive fires only
happen after periods of exceptional growth when
fuel is increased by the growth of annuals
between spinifex hummocks, due to aboveaverage rainfall. The hot, dry climate promotes
curing of fuels every year. Fires usually occur
in spring-summer, from September to January.
Fire, along with climate and soil, affects
biodiversity and the patterns of biodiversity
across the landscape. Changes to fire regimes—
variation in fire season, fire intensity, fire type and,
importantly, the intervals between fires—also
affect biodiversity.
The southern temperate zone
Landscape-scale fires occur episodically, and
at intervals of decades. Major fires occur in those
rare years when there is both drought and severe
fire weather. These fires are usually associated
with forests where fuels are woody rather than
grassy. Fires typically occur from October
to March.
8 | Fire management
The degree to which biodiversity is affected by
various fire regimes depends on the biology of
individual plants and animal species. Individual
species may be sensitive to some aspects of
a fire regime such as the time period between
fires (‘fire-interval sensitive’ species) and/or the
fire intensity (‘fire-intensity sensitive’ species).
A species may be able to cope with fire through
their mobility in time and/or space. For example,
animals may be able to relocate to unburnt areas,
and plants may depend on seed for post-fire
survival. Fire regimes, however, can push
a species to local extinction. Knowledge of
how plant and animal species respond to
various fire regimes is important for fire
planning and management.
Management and sustainability
People have used fire as a land management tool
for many thousands of years. Use of fire as a tool
needs to be understood within a local or regional
context. Different land management goals such
as improving pastoral productivity, increasing
biodiversity, and protecting habitat or property
from wildfire, may require different fire regimes.
General principles for managing fire
and biodiversity
The following general principles provide a basis
for managing fire and biodiversity in landscapes:
– The ecological effects of fire are determined by
fire regimes.
– Species of plants and animals have limits of
tolerance to fire regimes, which can be
exceeded under particular circumstances.
– The ecological effects of particular
management strategies can be predicted
if the plant communities’ thresholds or limits
of tolerance to fire regimes are known.
Monitoring is needed to verify the
ecological outcomes.
– The array of plant species and physical
structure of plant communities determine
the quality of habitat for many animal species.
– Management guidelines developed for plant
communities may also apply to animals
because of the importance of vegetation
as habitat.
– Fire regimes are shaped by past events and
managers need a spatial fire history record
to fully describe the fire regimes that prevail
in a landscape.
– Land managers need to understand the effects
of fire regimes, especially adverse fire regimes,
at broad spatial scales. In particular, they need
to consider potential losses of species that
may result at a landscape scale.
– The loss of a species from a landscape may
occur when fire regimes detrimental to that
species prevail across most of its habitat
in that landscape. In this sense, adverse fire
regimes may fragment landscapes.
Mosaics
Vegetation communities and habitats exist naturally as mosaics in the landscape. For example, within an
area of tropical eucalypt savanna, there may also be patches of small acacia scrubs, cypress pine thickets,
monsoon forest, riparian corridors, and swampy vegetation. Maintaining the diversity and health of the area
is important for animals and plants that depend on it as a habitat, and thus for biodiversity generally.
Fire has a special role in maintaining biodiversity throughout the landscape through its effects on habitat
diversity and the associated availability of resources. Fire has spatial effects by creating larger and smaller
patches, and temporal effects by having shorter and longer fire intervals.
In general, large areas of monotonous habitat, whether created by extensive frequent wildfire or total fire
exclusion, cater for fewer species and lower abundance of species than a variety of habitats generated
by fire.
Fire management | 9
Engaging communities in fire management
Challenges
There are a number of challenges in engaging
communities in fire planning and management
in the rangelands:
– Many people have a stake in fire management.
A diversity of approaches is required for
communication to be effective and this can
strain resources.
– Fire regions have a great diversity of land
uses and cultures and a corresponding range
of values, approaches and views concerning
fire management. For example, Indigenous
people burn country for different reasons
to pastoralists, miners and tour operators.
None of these reasons are ‘good’ or ‘bad’,
just different, and this difference needs to
be respected.
– Information cannot always be transferred
between regions. Fire management issues vary
considerably due to different vegetation and
landscapes, different land-uses, and different
cultural, social, and economic contexts.
10 | Fire management
– The remoteness, lifestyle, and culture of
many people involved in fire management
limits the effectiveness of more traditional
communication techniques such as mass
media, publications, and formal training
courses.
– Even those who are prepared to read
publications and attend courses may not
trust fire research findings if they have not
been effectively engaged in the research
and development process.
– There are few fire researchers, communicators
or planners in the rangelands so there is
relatively little information on which to base
decisions for fire management and planning.
These challenges can be addressed with
adequate resources and appropriate strategies.
There is a growing list of useful community-based
fire management projects in northern Australia
undertaken over the past decade. The most
effective projects are those in which regional
communities themselves have identified
significant, often contentious, fire management
issues. Different key regional stakeholder groups
working together to address the issues has also
proved effective.
Table1:
Principles of the ‘Three Cs’ required
for effective fire management programs
Three Cs
Principles
Implementation strategies for land managers
Building capacity
Project teams work with
the community’s culture
and processes.
Take an action research approach with broad community
involvement i.e. learning through experience.
Community engagement
Groups come together
to develop plans and tools
and share information for
managing fire in
their region.
Empower participants to:
Cooperation
The community actively
supports and participates in
the process.
There is genuine
collaboration between the
external organisations and
the community.
The process is facilitated
and coordinated.
– develop shared goals
– respect the values, approaches and views of others
– influence the research agenda and process
– share their concerns and ideas
– focus on tangible outcomes
– embed the lessons learnt from the project
in community knowledge
Develop or tap into existing networks.
Support communication in networks.
Ensure access to good information and
to communication tools.
Provide training and demonstrations; face-to-face
interactions and demonstrations are best.
Help communities to help themselves, especially
Indigenous communities e.g. support links between
Elders and youth.
Keep policy makers informed of issues.
Use the mass media for raising awareness in the broader
community.
Engage with the education system through schools
and more broadly through education departments.
Evaluate communication effort formally and informally.
The Three Cs: capacity, community engagement, and cooperation
The lessons from community-based fire management projects in the rangelands can be summarised
as the need for the ‘Three Cs’ (see Table 1):
– building capacity and awareness by providing appropriate tools and information
– fostering community engagement by involving the community in the research
– encouraging cooperation by getting people to work and learn together
The Three Cs are inter-dependent i.e. building up skills and tools will enable a community to more
effectively engage with research and adaptive fire management, and better collaborate with other groups.
Fire management | 11
Engaging Indigenous communities
Indigenous Australians play important roles
across many sectors in the rangelands, yet do
not necessarily see themselves in the ‘Indigenous
sector’. It is mindful and respectful to engage
Traditional Owners with Native Title interests
in country that is being managed by another
leaseholder.
Across the rangelands generally, Indigenous
Australians have much to offer in terms of their
knowledge of using fire. However, because many
of them no longer live permanently on their
country, much of this traditional knowledge is
no longer used and is not being passed on to
the younger people.
For Indigenous Australians to play an active role,
it is important to have:
12 | Fire management
– mutual engagement at the very beginning
of planning discussions, with access and
opportunity to address cultural, social,
economic, and biophysical issues
– employment opportunities, possibly supported
by a government employment programme, but
with a strategy that delivers ‘real’ employment
outcomes
– strong networks within the Indigenous sector
but also with other resource providers
– mutual respect for and use of cultural
knowledge—both Indigenous and
Western—in land management
Fire management planning checklist
Fire is an important tool for land management in the rangelands. Developing and implementing
a regional fire regime management plan that meets the needs of sustainable production and
biodiversity conservation is a major issue for the region.
The effectiveness of natural resource management (NRM) depends as much on the process of
development and implementation of the plan as it does on the contents of the plan. The following
checklist includes evaluation of all the elements required in the fire management component of
regional NRM plans. It aims to produce a structure and criteria for evaluating fire management
plans in the rangelands.
Planning process
Consultation
Have community groups and other stakeholders been consulted?
Objectives
Have existing fire regimes, fire management practices and/or fire management targets
been described?
Where any of these are considered to be inappropriate, has the magnitude and direction
of desired change been identified?
Ownership
Is there broad ownership of any existing fire management plan?
Is there broad ownership of the current process for developing a fire management plan?
Have the following stakeholders been engaged?
– Rural Fire Service or equivalent
– land holders/leaseholders, both public and private
– land councils and Indigenous communities
– other emergency services
– government departments e.g. main roads, transport
– private service providers e.g. railroads
– industry
14 | Fire management
Components of the Fire Management Plan
Information management
Is there region-specific information on the following:
–
–
–
–
–
vegetation types
sites of national and regional environmental significance
species assemblages/ecosystems and their fire attributes
species/vegetation response to various fire regimes
fire history and current fire regimes
Have cultural and heritage values been considered, such as:
– the protection of sites significant to Indigenous people
– the use of cultural knowledge and practices in resource management
Are vegetation and land use maps of an appropriate scale to meet management targets?
Have available cadastral map data been accessed and used?
Who has custodianship over the above information, where is it stored, and how can it be accessed?
Has specialist technical advice been sought in developing the plan?
Does the plan describe the available resources and key references?
Objectives and targets
Have fire management targets and associated resource condition targets been identified
and described, with short- and long-term objectives?
Have these targets been described at an appropriate scale?
Do targets meet the stakeholders’ expectations?
Have stakeholder aspirations and perceptions been considered in the development of the fire
management targets?
Options
Have the limitations of recommended fire management practices been recognised?
Do recommended fire management practices align with, or conflict with, other objectives and
practices in the NRM plan for the region?
Are alternative fire management practices identified where necessary?
Priorities
Have fire management practices been evaluated for cost/benefit?
Have fire management targets been assigned priorities according to biodiversity conservation
targets?
Have sites of significance and sites with heritage values for Indigenous people been considered?
Implementation
Is the fire management plan linked to maps of appropriate scale for implementation?
Is the cost of implementing the plan appropriate and realistic?
Is there the capacity, motivation, and expertise to implement the plan?
Has the need for regional fire education been considered?
Monitoring and review
Will fire regimes be monitored at a property and regional scale to ensure proposed improvements
in timing and intensity of burning are achieved?
Will ecological values be monitored, including the responses of flora and fauna?
How will the results of fire regime and ecological monitoring be reported, assessed against
management targets, and used to adapt the plan in the future?
Fire management | 15
Setting priorities for development of fire management plans
All regional bodies in the rangelands need to
address fire management as part of the regional
NRM planning process, although the priority of
fire management depends on the region and the
broad vegetation types. In the few regions where
wildfire is relatively infrequent or restricted, such
as chenopod shrublands, there are still particular
locations and contexts that demand a planned
approach to fire management.
The following principles can be used to set
priorities for regions and for fire management
plan activities. They are based on four criteria:
information, geographic spread, transferability,
and capacity.
Information
– Baseline information is a fundamental
requirement for all regions. Priority should
be given to projects that will provide such
information, especially if it enables
comparisons of fire regimes both within
and between regions.
– Mapping of fire occurrence and vegetation at
spatial and temporal scales appropriate to the
region is important. This should also identify
areas with adverse fire regimes i.e. regimes
that do not help to achieve regional objectives.
16 | Fire management
– Traditional Owners, including existing and
emerging Indigenous groups, with baseline
Indigenous fire management information
should be engaged and appropriately
supported, and their perceptions incorporated
in land management planning. Language
should be considered and resourced as
it helps retain and transmit Indigenous
knowledge that can contribute to improved
land management.
Geographic spread
– From a whole-of-rangelands perspective,
there is a need for a good geographic spread
of working case studies, including the three
rangeland fire regions: the wet-dry tropical
savanna region of northern Australia; the semiarid and arid interior; and the southern
temperate zone.
– There should also be a spread of initiatives
that encompass the major sectors and land
tenures—for example, pastoral lands,
Indigenous-owned lands, and the conservation
estate—recognising that sectoral interests
may overlap.
Transferability
Capacity
Priority should be given to projects and
plans that:
Investing in projects that strengthen the capacity
to deliver on fire management for biodiversity
and/or production outcomes should be
considered. Fire management is a continuous
process requiring an ongoing and adaptable
human presence in the landscape. Increased
capacity should be considered as an outcome
additional to direct gains through fire
management. This may off-set what may seem
to be initially slow progress on improving fire
management outcomes.
– are generally applicable within and between
regions or will demonstrate a principle or
strategy to a wider set of locations or regions
– are time-critical; for example:
> Habitats or species are threatened because
of fire regime or inappropriate fire
management.
> Improved fire management will increase
the prospects of a threatened habitat
or species.
> Valuable Indigenous knowledge is available.
In this case engagement is time-critical due
to the rapid decline in the number of Elders
and Indigenous knowledge holders with
experience in traditional land management.
– provide a positive return on investment
– integrate fire management with other NRM
activities such as weed management, feral
animal management, and the management
of sacred sites
Fire management | 17
Information requirements and critical knowledge gaps
A number of critical knowledge gaps need
to be addressed to achieve sustainable fire
management throughout the Australian
rangelands. These can be categorised
as inclusive community engagement, key
information needs, and implementation
issues. See also the section for specific
information gaps.
Community engagement issues
Understanding engagement
Successful community-based fire management
projects provide lessons for other communities.
However, they do not replace practical
experience with, and engagement of,
regional communities in dealing with their own
fire management issues. Modes of engagement
that go beyond traditional extension, training,
and communication initiatives are needed.
Indigenous involvement
There is a need to better recognise the significant
impediments—cultural, language, literacy,
educational, and resource—to Indigenous
18 | Fire management
participation in community fire management.
This includes accessing, and contributing to,
pertinent information sources.
Education
Relevant information needs to be incorporated
into accessible environmental curricula materials,
particularly at primary and secondary school
level. As an example, a recent initiative in
the Northern Territory was aimed at upperprimary/lower-secondary schools and involved
CSIRO, Greening Australia, the Northern Territory
Government, and the Tropical Savannas CRC.
Informing policy
There is a major information and credibility gap
between rangelands land/fire managers and
those responsible for developing and practicing
regional, state/territory, and national fire
management policy. The recent publication of
the Council of Australian Governments National
Bushfires Report (Ellis et al. 2004) addresses this
gap but more effort is needed to better inform
policy makers of the extent and significance
of bushfire and related management issues in
the Australian rangelands.
Information issues
Fire history and fire mapping
Fire mapping products and their uptake by
regional communities are recognised as a
national priority for fire management. Derived
from satellite images, they inform both real-time
incident management, and longer-term strategic
property and regional fire management planning.
Several fire history information sources
are discussed in detail in the main report.
These include:
– satellite images used for the continental fire
history database developed by the Tropical
Savannas CRC and Western Australia’s
Department of Land Information
– the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on
the Terra and Aqua satellites
– Landsat satellite images, including the
timesliced dataset compiled by the Australian
Greenhouse Office carbon accounting program
– the1997–2003 continental fire history database
which provides an overview of fire history and
fire regimes in the major climate/fire regions
Each of these information sources has limitations
that need to be fully appreciated prior to use.
Assessing fire risk
Fire risk assessment requires the timely
collation and interpretation of a diversity of spatial
datasets. Although some of the basic datasets
required are available for some states, a complete
set for Australia has not been compiled.
The understanding and models needed to derive
ancillary information, and to calculate risk,
are also lacking.
Risk assessment is valuable during periods of
high fire danger and can also provide information
to improve the timing of strategic management.
Simple models and/or rules of thumb are
generally based on experience of local land
managers; however, they are generally biased
to most recent years and influenced by local
conditions. For some regions, the interaction
of risk factors is very complex.
Fire management | 19
More complex models are required, incorporating
a diversity of spatial datasets, including:
– rainfall, as a combination of point-based
records and interpolated surface grids
– climate information, including seasonal trends,
temperature, wind, and solar radiation
– topography
Some spatial information about the distribution
of many fire-sensitive vegetation types is
available; however, it is often not at a fine enough
scale to locate or distinguish vegetation patches.
For much of the rangelands, the best available
scale of vegetation mapping is 1:1 000 000,
and mapping at this scale can show only the
dominant vegetation association occurring over
relatively large areas.
– fire history
– vegetation type, generalised across Australia
but with local/regional variations
– curing state
– pasture production models by major
vegetation type
Vegetation and key flora species mapping
More detailed mapping of vegetation and key firesensitive flora and fauna species is needed to
inform regional fire management planning and
implementation. This includes more fire-sensitive
assemblages which are often small patches in
the matrix of more widespread types.
20 | Fire management
There are significant knowledge gaps for current
status and plant population trends in many of
these vegetation types. Therefore, mapping of
fire-sensitive vegetation, key habitats for fauna,
and fauna distributions generally, is a critical
priority.
Species response to fire regimes
There is a lack of information about how
individual species respond to different
components of fire regimes. The biology of plant
and animal species determines how each will
respond to fire interval, intensity and season.
Survival rates, reproductive rates, lifespans
and dispersal capabilities differ widely among
species—and so responses to fire regimes also
vary considerably. This knowledge is of great
practical importance and can form the basis of
generalisations that assist decision-making and
guide monitoring in fire management.
spatial and temporal patchiness, and monitor its
impacts, should be encouraged. More can then
be learnt of the conditions and arrangements that
foster a mosaic.
There is considerable activity occurring nationally
to redress the lack of information on key fire
attributes of plant and animal species. This is
discussed in more detail in the main report.
Monitoring and adapting
Implementation issues
Implementing the mosaic
It is well recognised that a fire-created mosaic—
one that varies in both space and time—better
meets the variable needs of rangelands flora and
fauna and enables higher biodiversity than in
more homogeneous fire landscapes.
Effective and sustainable fire management in
the rangelands requires that monitoring and
adaptive processes are in place. This is no easy
task and has not been undertaken effectively on
a large regional scale in Australia’s rangelands.
Developing effective monitoring and adaptive
processes, particularly cost-effective programs
that include timely provision of information for
effecting adaptive processes, is clearly a
priority issue.
In practice, such a mosaic has been very difficult
to attain. This is the case even in large protected
areas (e.g. Kakadu National Park) where a mosaic
is recognised as necessary for maintaining
regional biodiversity and the technical information
is available. As such, applied fire management
activity that aims to deliver and document greater
Fire management | 21
Vegetation types of
Australian rangelands
Australian rangelands can be categorised into
eight broad vegetation types. These vegetation
types, and related fire management issues, are
summarised below. For more details, please
consult the main report.
There are two important points to note for all
vegetation groups:
– Like all landscapes, they each show a range of
responses to fire in its effects on biodiversity.
Some elements of the biodiversity are resilient
to variation in fire regime, while others are
sensitive to fire intensity and/or sensitive to
fire interval. Therefore, no single fire regime
applied at landscape scales can meet the
needs of any one major land management
objective (e.g. biodiversity conservation),
let alone multiple land management objectives.
24 | Fire management
– Within each major vegetation group, patches
of other vegetation often exist. For example,
monsoon rainforest pockets can often be
found in the tropical eucalypt savanna;
and stands of Callitris can be found in tropical
eucalypt savanna, mallee, and temperate
eucalypt communities. These patches require
different fire management to that of the
surrounding dominant vegetation.