Underpinnings of fire management for biodiversity conservation in ...

Fire and adaptive management
2
Chapter 1 Introduction
Management in brief
Conservation reserves range from large wilderness reserves to small, isolated remnants in modified
landscapes. Reserves can be embedded within regions dominated by agriculture, pastoralism, cities or
commercial forestry.
The native flora and fauna of reserves – biodiversity in its common meaning – has changed over time.
Some species have become extinct within particular reserves, while some have disappeared from the
continent altogether. There are species that have invaded reserves as exotics from foreign lands or
as natives out of place. Populations of indigenous species of plants and animals have changed too,
as have the occurrences of certain landscape events. Because of all these changes, management of
conservation reserves can be seen primarily as some form of restoration management (Gill 2003).
Of special significance is that fire regimes – the sequence of fires occurring at a range of intervals with
different properties at various times of year in different fuel types (Gill 1975, 1981) – have changed
over time. The role of Aboriginal people in ignition has changed; the various influences of nonindigenous
settlers has changed; and contemporary human communities are affecting fire-induced
change through planned ignitions, carelessness and arson. Furthermore, fire suppression has changed
dramatically since European settlement, and markedly since the Second World War, and it continues
to change, with increasing emphasis on technology.
Do we need to try to domesticate fire regimes in conservation reserves? In one sense, the answer
is easy – we have no option. This is because responsible management and law dictate that fires
originating within reserves should not be imposed on those outside reserves. Similarly, fire regimes
suited to lands adjacent to reserves may not be suited to the reserve so should be kept out of the
reserve. Furthermore, protection of human life and economic assets, both inside and outside the
reserve, is an ever-present imperative that calls for intervention of some sort. If fires are eliminated
from areas external to the reserve, the flux of fires across the reserve boundary necessarily change.
Given this, fire regimes change to various extents from the boundaries inward and require
intervention if they are to be restored.
While the above observations do not answer questions about the relationships between fire and
biodiversity directly, they do indicate that intervention is usually inevitable for biodiversity conservation
in fire-prone reserves. Assuming intervention is necessary, there are three ways in which this can
occur, within the context of protecting life and property1 : (i) establishment of fuel breaks and
buffers that provide resistance to fire spread; (ii) direct fire suppression; and (iii) fuel modification or
reduction. While each of these has its merits in relation to domesticating fire regimes, they also have
environmental effects that may or may not enhance conservation value or the visitor’s appreciation
of biodiversity. The premise of this publication is that it is important to understand biodiversity
conservation management issues from both a biodiversity point of view and firefighting and fire
management point of view.
In Australia, most of the land set aside for conservation of biodiversity is managed by government
agencies. Their attitudes, knowledge, skills and resources can have a strong affect on management
processes and outcomes on the ground. The attitudes they exhibit may be quite varied but show
particular emphases, such as leave nature to get on with its work or be strongly interventionist. The
agency may see itself as an acquirer of land rather than the manager of land already acquired. It may
see itself as a learning organisation (knowledge or evidence based; Senge 1990), or as just another
government department. Agencies may see themselves as strategists, politically wise, businesses,
politically sensitive, doers, experts, battlers against the odds, good neighbours, team players or
processors of forms. They may be up-to-date or way behind scientifically. Regardless, what is important
is the outcomes on the ground in relation to the democratically (i.e. government) determined aims and
objectives for the management of landscape.
1 There may be off-reserve programs, like community education, also.