TYPES OF BURNS
While the bursts of yellow wattle through the canopy signal the steady awakening of a dormant landscape, the Yarra Ranges community has been alive with action, working throughout the colder months to prepare for fire season.
With a history that is so deeply intertwined with fire, the management of one of Australia’s most crucial elements must be handled with the utmost care.
Managing Victoria’s landscape requires heavy handed and regular intervention. From fuel reduction to the facilitation of biodiversity, fire and planned burning play crucial roles in the management and protection of Victoria’s landscapes.
From managing the landscape with slashers and choppers, to the incorporation of cultural fire practices, here is a guide to the many initiatives that take place in the Yarra Ranges to combat the threat of bushfires and to promote the health of the land.
CULTURAL BURNS
“When Aboriginal people cared for the landscapes, they built in natural bushfire mitigation.”
“There’s no recorded evidence of a major bushfire over the last 6000 years before colonisation.
None that we are aware of anyway.”
Yarra Ranges Council Indigenous development coordinator Garry Detez squinted against a tendril of smoke that had temporarily drifted into his face.
He paused, waiting for it to drift away and then continued talking.
“On the back of the Black Saturday fires, the council was looking at better ways to build natural mitigation into the landscape, to provide healing but also to build resilience into communities as well,” Mr Detez said.
“We came across the ancient Aboriginal practice of cultural burning and it’s been a long journey, probably about nine or 10 years but we are implementing it now.”
For the past 60,000 years, Australia’s First Nations People have been performing cultural burns to promote growth, manage the landscape and improve the health of the land and its people. Since 2024, this process has been incorporated into the Yarra Ranges Council’s planned burning program.
The first cultural burn was led at Spadonis Reserve in Yering.
Cultural burns are conducted intentionally by traditional owners of Country and have many purposes, ranging from healing to ceremonial. Also known as ‘cool burns’, cultural burns are gentle and do not penetrate through the top layer of soil.
Instead of predominantly pre-burning to eliminate potential fire fuel, cultural burns are also used to encourage biodiversity.
Wurundjeri man and Indigenous Development Officer at the Yarra Ranges Council, Darren Wandin said, “Fuel reduction isn’t the name of the game. What we’re looking at is reintroducing and revitalising existing species.”
The soil layer is seen as a seed or ‘memory’ bank that stores the identity of the burn site. Noxious weed species such as Philaris grass are burned off and the seedbank is left to regenerate native species.
“Timing is critical for a landscape like this. It’s about working with those elements, making sure that they’re favourable,” Mr Wandin said.
“It really is about going out and reading the country, understanding what’s there and what’s present, touching the soil and touching the grass.”
Due to their ‘cool’ nature, cultural burns are relatively low risk.
The addition of Cultural burning to the Yarra Ranges Council’s 2024-2034 Nature Plan and Fire as Land Management Tool is supported by the Firesticks Program – a national Indigenous network dedicated to reviving Cultural knowledge practices.
Seeing as much knowledge of the Wurundjeri people’s burning practices has been lost, the Firesticks program and the council have drawn upon the burning practices from other nations across Australia in efforts to combine and revive these cultural practices.
“In reconciliation, where you’ve got Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people applying traditional knowledge systems on the landscape together…” Mr Detez said as the last whisps of smoke began to peter out, –
“We can protect our community and work hard to bring that ancient healing back into our landscapes.”
PLANNED BURNS
An essential land management tool in Victoria, planned burns are used to reduce the risk of bushfires and promote the health of the environment.
These controlled fires are carried out under specific conditions and are heavily monitored by trained firefighters and other specialists to manage fuel loads such as grass, leaves and fallen branches and to protect communities.
Planned burns reduce bushfire size and severity, aid bushfire suppression efforts, reduce bushfire risk, reduce the ignition likelihood in areas where large bushfires are predicted to occur, and facilitate ecological diversity and regeneration.
Part of forest fire management, planned burns in the Yarra Ranges are managed collectively by the Country Fire Authority (CFA), Forest Fire Management Victoria and the Yarra Ranges Council.
Deputy Chief Fire Officer and Director Forest and Fire Operations for Port Phillip Region, Tamara Beckett, confirmed that there are many facets to planned burning, ranging from slashing to creating breaks between fuel areas.
“We have a long-term plan about areas where we can undertake planned burning to reduce fuel loads and slow or stop the spread of a fire once it gets up and going. It’s a really big program,” Ms Beckett said.
“In partnership with the fuel management program, we also do a whole range of mechanical fuel treatment. So mulching, slashing and mowing along tracks to create those breaks in the fuel.
“We have a whole range of people who are really highly trained and use a whole range of different plants and equipment, as well as aircraft, in order to respond to fires when they start.”
Some individual burns are higher priority than others due to their greater ability to reduce fire risk than in other areas.
The process for planned burning is a long one that involves many resources and much planning. Victoria’s Joint Fuel Management Program manages fuel on both public and private land in accordance with a three-year plan.
Each year, the plan is updated to showcase future planned burns and high-risk areas.
Planned burning and the ‘Planned Burning Program’ are umbrella terms that cover all kinds of processes.
“As part of the Planned Burning Program, we undertake risk reduction burns, ecological burns and cultural burns, so we refer to the whole lot as the planned burning program,” Ms Beckett said.
THE EFFECTS OF PLANNED BURNING/PLANNED BURNING AND THE LANDSCAPE
“If we leave fire out of many of our ecosystems, we start to lose plant and animal species from those systems. If we put the wrong fire into those environments, we will also lose species.”
“It is about finding the right mix of fire, in order to maintain and promote our country’s biodiversity.”
Professor in Bushfire Behaviour and Leader of the fire research team at the University of Melbourne, Dr Trent Penman is passionate about fire management.
He knows that burning is a fine art that requires precision.
An art that when conducted at the wrong times, may have serious consequences for flora and fauna alike.
Dr Penman knows just how integral burning is to the preservation and functioning of our environment. And he knows just how planned burning is supposed to function.
Despite the secluded nature of the Yarra Ranges, the practices that are implemented by fire agencies in our own community are not too different from those that are facilitated across Australia, and even the globe.
Despite planned burning not being a new concept, its present day application in the Yarra Ranges looks very different to what it did a century ago. Now incorporating slashing, mulching, the creation of land breaks and the reintroduction of cultural burning, planned burning schemes are tailored to the needs of different regions.
Dr Penman, noted the divergent planned burning protocols for different areas.
“Over in the eastern part of the state where we have quite dissected terrain, in the form of very steep slopes and wet gullies, prescribed burning, can occur on the drier ridge tops with the burn running down into the gullies and the natural moisture gradient will act as a barrier for the fire to spread,” he said.
“Prescribed burning strategies across the region involves burning in different places in different ways, so for example, near houses, they will burn more intensely and more frequently to lower fuels so that if a fire does come near those houses, there is a higher chance of suppression crews being able to protect those houses.
“The first goal of fire management in Victoria and across Australia is to change fire behaviour to get a suppression advantage in order to protect life and property.”
Although most Planned burns can be effective at mitigating fire risk for approximately eight years after they are implemented, a single burn itself will not necessarily change the effects of larger fires.
Dr Penman said, “Planned burns have little effect when it comes to larger scale fire events such as the Black Saturday fires, however even under extreme conditions, planned burns are useful for around eight years, which is quite a long time, relative to the treatment.”
Albeit having limited effects on large scale fires, planned burning at a higher intensity around built-up areas has “high chances of fire suppression” according to Dr Penman.
The new code of practice for bushfire management on public land released by Victoria earlier this year, includes four elements; the protection of life and property, the protection of infrastructure, the promotion of resilient ecosystems, and space to allow self determination of indigenous communities for land management.
In developing their fire management plans, agencies must therefore, allow space for all of these elements, while serving their primary purpose of protecting life and property.
Burning in the landscape is conducted for the joint reason of trying to moderate fire behaviour as well as to promote ecological values.
“Some landscapes might need fire every thirty to fifty years, and different areas need different types of fires as well,” Dr Penman said.
One of the areas Australia excels in is fire detection.
Dr Penman said, “We know that the detection rate in most areas of Australia, particularly around the urban and the semi rural setting is extremely fast and we are also sending crews to these fires extremely quickly.”
In terms of improvements that need to be made to Victoria’s Fire Management system, Dr Penman emphasises the importance of ongoing public engagement.
“The biggest change I have seen over the last 20 to 25 years in fire management is the extent to which community conversations are being included, and it’s a very good thing,” Dr Penman said.
“So if there’s anything they can do more of, it’s probably about engaging with the communities to provide information on why they’ve made the decisions they are making and what, those conversations determine whether fire management plans are realistic or, no longer feasible,” he said.
While many of Victoria’s Planned Burning initiatives have been developed over years of application, a new investment in and incorporation of mulching into the state’s fire management scheme is making headway.
Dr Penman said, “Mulching is a non-fire way of changing fuel structure, and it is used primarily for asset protection zones.”
“Victoria has been having some success with mulching, in terms of increasing the longevity of the fuel reduction effect, and also reducing smoke load on human populations because we know smoke is a major issue,” he said.
Mulching noxious weeds and leaving the remainders on the ground improves suppression abilities, as the mulch-bed curbs flame heights limiting the travel speed of the fire.
Further, mulching increases biodiversity, encouraging native species to flourish where foreign species once dominated.
Dr Penman said, “Mulch beds take a while to break down with the bigger fuels. They’ll retain a lot of moisture in the soil, so it will allow species to regenerate.”
“Early results are suggesting the plant communities are coming back more like a natural community rather than the wheat infested simplified community before, and the bird communities are more diverse in the mulched areas than they are in these dense weed infested areas as well, so there’s both biodiversity benefit and a fire risk benefit.
“The mulch will still burn, but it will burn slower.”
While the mulch fuels can take up to two and a half hours to cover, one and a half meters, whereas the leaf litter that you’d have in a forest might only take a few minutes.
“It means that those communities right behind those mulched areas may have a little bit longer to safely evacuate,” Dr Penman said.
Due to it being a relatively new mode of fire control, further impacts of mulching, such as its effect on microbial communities and other biodiversity values are yet to be discovered.
Another fire management initiative that is being rolled out is the ‘bushfire map moderation zone’ which is a series of burns that are put in place to reduce either the intensity or behaviour and positioning of a fire.
Dr Penman said, “Most houses in Australia are lost from embers, so if we can reduce the embers that are coming into our urban areas, that can make a big difference.
“Bushfire map moderation zones try to reduce embers and can be situated in strategic places in the landscape.”
In accompaniment to the fire management initiatives mentioned above, there is new research being conducted on ‘refugia’ – areas of the landscape that are less likely to burn.
With increasing identification of refugia, efforts are being made to protect these unburned areas, to encourage biodiversity and maintain safe havens for wildlife.
Despite the rigorous fire management action that is being taken by local, state and federal agencies, Dr Penman elicited that climate change remains a threat to fire safety and therefore, the livelihood and security of Australia’s people, biodiversity and climate.
Dr Penman said, “All the models that we’ve been looking at and others have been looking at all tell us that the frequency of big fires is going to increase.”
“As things are changing and we’re seeing shifting fire patterns for climate change and a host of other reasons, we need to be able to look forward, game the system and actually look at what the potential outcomes are and what risks agencies will be able to mitigate.”
According to Dr Penman, the ways that individuals can take action involve recycling, reducing the use of vehicles and limiting the use of soft plastics among other items.
“As individuals, we can take actions, but, unfortunately, it’s very much in the hands of the world leaders at the moment to actually make serious climate change action. But we’re not going to see fundamental change until the globe is on board and actually make some hard decisions,” Dr Penman said.
“If we wait another 20 years, it’s going to be harder because things are already changing now and will continue to change into the future. Everyone has to come together, but nobody really is in the driving seat at the moment.
“It’s not just one government agency, it’s not just one community. Everybody is affected by this.”
