How we burn to conserve

Training

Strategising

Each QPWS region across the State develops an Annual Planned Burn program to identify priority burn areas. To help us identify planned burn areas on park, we consider a range of factors including proximity to homes, the risk of bushfires, vegetation types, landscape characteristics, the requirements of significant species, and cultural values.

As a result of these assessments, we can determine the type of fire required to achieve our short-term objectives and the fire regime required to meet longer-term objectives in the different sections of our parks and forests. While working collaboratively with our external partners, we consider all critical factors needed to undertake strategic, planned burn operations in the right weather conditions.

Collaborating

QPWS conducts hundreds of planned burns annually, with the majority of these led by our own highly skilled Ranger workforce. Some planned burns are done in collaboration with partnering landholders, First Nations people, the Queensland Fire Department, local councils and other government agencies. This collaboration supports us to execute planned burns with differing layers of complexity, scale and logistics. Collaboration with our partners and neighbours happens prior to burns and on burn days, depending on the area, burn method, operation and risk, with each party bringing their own expertise.

Planning

Our burns can be planned for months and sometimes years in advance. We consider many different factors when planning for a burn including the area’s fire history, the type of fire an area needs, the flora and fauna and vegetation communities, our neighbours, surrounding land uses and accessibility of the protected area. Before we conduct our planned burns, we address key safety considerations and complete the necessary prep work. Clear roles and responsibilities are assigned to all involved to ensure the many different factors of the burn have been considered.

Our planning considerations include favourable weather conditions for the park to achieve the best outcomes, particularly where assets need protection and consideration, risk factors, the kind of fuel load, and the burn strategy and tactics.

Once plans are made, we inform the community of our burns through various approaches including directly informing park neighbours, Park Alerts, roadside signage and local media outlets.

Crews must wait for the appropriate weather conditions, and regular meetings are held between regional teams to allocate resources like crews, incendiary machines, helicopters, and fire units to the areas where burns are ready to go ahead.

Prepping

Prep work can take days or even weeks, depending on the burn. It can involve raking around key assets such as signage, trees that could pose a safety threat if they caught fire, and trees of cultural or environmental significance (such as habitat for hollow-dwelling wildlife), to limit the fire from getting too close once the planned burn is underway. This stage of a planned burn operation is particularly important where there are built assets within the park, including signs, bridges, fences, visitor facilities and electricity towers.

Rangers also keep fire fleet vehicles and other equipment maintained and ensure firelines are clear for best access for emergency response, should a bushfire occur.

Testing

Testing takes place leading up to a planned burn, when weather is favourable.

Once Rangers are in full fire Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), they light a small portion of the area to be burned. The Rangers observe the fire behaviour, before extinguishing the flames or letting them self-extinguish.

Various instruments may be used to provide data that indicates how the area may burn on the day of the operation under similar weather conditions. Testing ensures the area will burn once all logistics, community notices, resources and staff have been organised on a burn day by confirming there isn’t too much moisture in the vegetation.

Burning

Burn days involve a team of Rangers, overseen by an Incident Controller, all performing their own roles to execute the burn as safely and with as minimal impact as possible. Burns can take one or multiple days and include monitoring post-burn and mop up.

There are different kinds of planned burns. Some are specifically for hazard reduction and the goal is to reduce fuel loads to minimise the risk of bushfires impacting people and assets including built, cultural and environmental assets.

Others are for ecological purposes to achieve biodiversity conservation outcomes. Planned burning for ecological purposes also contributes to reducing the likelihood or extent of negative impacts from bushfires on natural and cultural values. These burns are typically undertaken in conditions that result in patchy, low intensity burns to provide animal refuges while minimising loss of important habitat (such as logs and hollow-bearing trees), promoting rapid post-fire regeneration of healthy vegetation, and creating a mosaic of burn ages over time.

We use different lighting and burn techniques depending on the size of the burn area, topography, purpose of the burn and other factors identified in our planning. These techniques range from hand lighting with drip torches to aerial incendiary lighting using helicopters and small planes and, occasionally, incendiary drones.

Evaluating

We are continually learning, adapting and improving our fire management practices to enhance our capacity and capability across the four annual stages of landscape fire management—prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, and for ecological and cultural purposes. This helps keep our parks and forests and nearby communities safe from the risk of bushfires and fosters a healthy environment.

Many of Queensland’s ecosystems are fire-adapted, containing plant species with adaptations to survive fire and or regenerate. Some native plants require fire at times in their life cycle to persist and thrive.

Post-fire evaluations help us determine whether the purposes of the burn were met, and longer-term monitoring helps us determine if ecological and cultural outcomes are being achieved over time.

Health Checks (PDF, 1.3MB) are a simple tool which, combined with other monitoring associated with planned burning and pest management, provide a basis for regular evaluation of the effectiveness of our actions in maintaining or improving the condition of many natural values on parks and forests.

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