A Risk Framework for Ecological Risks Associated with Prescribed Burning

AFAC has engaged with land and fire management agencies to bring together a risk management framework for ecological risks associated with prescribed burning. This framework offers a synthesis of concerns, approaches and activities that organisations across Australia engage in to manage ecological risks across all phases of planning, implementation and evaluation of prescribed burns.

The challenge for land managers today is to understand and apply the right kind of fire with the right techniques at the right times and places to deliver the various outcomes that prescribed burning can achieve. In an environment where the competing objectives for fire and land management are increasingly complex, underpinning our prescribed burning with the best possible ecological outcomes is an important part of fire management. Despite the large variation in fire regimes and the significant differences in extent and frequency of planned and unplanned fires in landscapes, particularly between northern and southern Australia, there are some key common principles that emerge.

Thought the National Burning Project, AFAC has sought to engage with prescribed fire practitioners throughout Australia to draw out these common principles and derive a common operating framework for addressing risk to ecological values at all levels of prescribed burning management.

This risk management framework for ecological risks associated with prescribed burning provides a way to consider the steps and processes that all land managers can take when seeking the best ecological outcomes. It offers a synthesis of concerns, approaches and activities that organisations across Australia engage in to manage ecological risks associated with prescribed burning.