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Bushfires have shaped the landscape and people of Australia.

"Living with Fire" is a slogan promoted by fire and land mangers to recognize the inescapable links we have with bushfires in Australia. Write a review of the literature and other media, that puts into context, the ways in which modern Australians manage fire, have adapted to living in a fire-prone landscape, try to reduce the adverse impacts of fire on human lives and infrastructure, and maintain a sustainable environment. Suggest ways in which we could better plan and manage fire in our landscape to achieve better ecological, social, economic and political outcomes in Australia. Living with fire is a common slogan promoted by fire and land managers to describe the ancient link Australians past and present have had with Fire. It has been deemed inescapable by all, as it forms a critical element of maintaining, preserving and repopulating our native environment and has so for thousands of years. An academic Kanowski once said that the landmass of Australia, its relatively small population and land management agencies as well as the fragmented forested landscape resulting from European settlement in the 1900s combined with the fire prone nature of most Australian ecosystems, and the inevitable occurrence of severe fire conditions, mean that it will never be feasible, even if it was desirable, to maintain fuels at a sufficiently low level to prevent fires, nor to suppress all fires in Australia. Rather, land managers and fire agencies instead need to use their funds and resources strategically to minimise the risk that fires pose to life and to assets of all forms. This however creates an issue with human welfare, safety and infrastructure security. So to protect our population and assets many different fire strategies have been suggested and attempted to incorporate safety with minimal loss to the biodiversity which makes Australias landscape so unique on the planet. With this issue being such a national concern each year in the southern states and each dry season in the Australian tropics, media coverage and literature on wildfire and bushfire tragedy is vast and comes from many different sources. A recent review by the Commonwealth of Australia into fire management forms a large collaboration to bring together the most effective way of managing fire within our landscape to achieve better ecological, social, economic and political outcomes. Preparedness for disasters caused by fire in many of the Australian states is now being achieved through the development of various forms of landscape and fuel management planning and zones, which blend boundary zones between rural and urban land uses, and between primary production and conservation reserves. These are usually the parts of the landscape in which fire poses the greatest risks to lives, property and economic values. Such boundary areas are a high priority for fuel management as well as for other government departments and preparedness organizations in which to concentrate their resources, especially where land uses and management objectives prevent wide scale fuel reduction in the environment. Maximising the effectiveness of this strategic approach to fire risk minimisation depends also on a much more accurate evaluation by land managers and fire authorities of the effectiveness of fuel reduction and other risk minimisation measures as this strategy is critical in preventing loss of both life and assets. From the COAG Report by Kanowski, Ellis and Whelan in 2004 we can see they suggested that this would require procedures that implemented detailed systematic monitoring and evaluation which could provide

1. Accurate measurement and mapping of fuel reduction activities and fuel loads 2. Accurate mapping of unplanned fires across a landscape such as establishing and maintaining a national program of fire regime mapping, which draws on new technologies like the Sentinel satellite based fire mapping system and the Western Australian Department of Land Information AVHRR imagery database. 3. Detailed analysis of the behaviour of the unplanned fires against the fuel landscape 4. Detailed analysis of the pattern of damage to the various assets in the landscape. Because fuel and ignition are the only significant components of fire behaviour that people can modify readily as weather and topography are either unpredictable and or are constant, fuel management through fuel reduction burning or physical Removal is and has been a central activity in fire management by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians for many years. As such fuel modification is a critical component of fire risk reduction, because fuel reduction burning is the only current economically viable means of fuel reduction on a landscape scale the size of Australia, Thus it is widely used throughout the country. Comprehending the implications of fuel reduction burning for biodiversity, as well as initiating fire regimes that are appropriately balanced between fire risk reduction to human assets and plant and animal habitat biodiversity conservation is the major challenge for land managers and fire authorities. This is because biodiversity is considered so critical and is thus another key issue when dealing with the problem of a fire regime. A network of national parks, no matter how expansive, is inadequate to carry appropriate biodiversity conservation. Especially if the biodiversity is in relation to providing ecosystem services and preserving ecological processes on ground that is used for economic production such as farms. Biodiversity conservation needs to be tackled across all land tenures to ensure a healthy variance in plant genetic material. The conservation of biodiversity is about avoiding the extinction of the local native species. Many people are misinformed that all Australian species are unaffected by fires. Where instead research clearly describes that the plant and animal population may be adapted to certain regional based fire regimes but not to alternate regimes. In many habitats that human populations dwell that exist on the fringe of the bushland in which biodiversity preservation is critical to land management goals, achieving a stable and effective fire regime that facilitates protection of human property and life will also cause a negative effect on the conservation of some native species. This situation regularly causes furore amongst the population and has been at the core of many heated arguments about bushfire mitigation strategies between governments and land managers, to protect the natural environment and maintain its variety and originality or embrace protection of the human life within the same area at the expense of some of the environment. Furthermore, in addition to their impacts on the native environment, fires also have significant and usually determinative impacts on basic human life, health, property, infrastructure and primary production systems. The past 40 years have seen fires claim more than 250 lives and injuring countless more, making them the most hazardous form of natural event in Australia. The financial cost caused by these fires totals around $2.5 billion over the same 40years and represents approximately 10% of the costs of natural disasters in Australia. (Gill, Anderson et.al.) These Low intensity cool season fires and

intense uncontrollable fires can affect human health through reducing the air quality which can be detrimental to a sizable percentage of the population, especially asthmatics. In this way bushfires manage to focus our attention on individual people and individual structures as priceless possessions, and as a civilized society we face the complex challenge of finding ways to protect these human lives and belongings. Thus the lower the intensity of any particular fire, the more manageable it will be to protect any adjacent property. Fuel determines the intensity factor of a fire and as stated before is one of two factors that humans can manipulate easily. If the fuel is limited, then the fires cannot reach the same level that they could if fuel was allowed to amass without restriction. This principle underlies the entire fuel reduction burning as an approach to bushfire management. Forested areas that receive fuel reduction processes need to be constantly maintained frequently enough to keep the fuel below certain critical levels which would allow a fire to reach damaging potentials. Risk management processes have been developed to deal with fire based assessments due to the frequency of fire within the Australian environment. These methods of assessing how to fuel reduce individual situations are methodical and is broken down into seven steps as listed by Gill and Anderson et.al(2006). Initially the authority must establish the context. This requires the classification of all assets, the calculation of their locations in the landscape, and the communication of the objectives relating to each individual asset from the viewpoint of all of the groups that value and benefit from it. Assets are defined as anything that encompasses all ecological, social, cultural and economic values. The land manager must then identify the risks to the assets. At this time, factors contributing to the likelihood of adverse effects in the event of fire are identified. The key characteristics of the environments that were built were natural and social within the landscape are investigated to determine the vulnerability of each asset. Analysing the risks incorporates the likelihood of a bushfire occurring using historical information and past experience with the probable impacts and damage caused by a fire for the set of pre defined identified assets and values within the effected landscape or region. The land manager must then evaluate the risks for the specified environment. The risk levels determined during the previous phase are compared and priorities for further action are developed including evaluation tradeoffs between different assets and values, especially between any ecological loss and economic loss. As part of the comparison, some assessment is calculated of how certain treatment options will alter or change the levels of risk within the environment. Models are becoming more accurate every year due to the increase in data and the ability to compress and display large volumes of data using GIS software. This enables the land manager to efficiently decide the option and extent as well as the location to reduce the fuel in an environment to achieve the best results. Treating the risks is the implementation phase of the process. Treatments are applied to: 1. Avoid the risk by regulating and or restricting land use 2. Reduce the risk by enforcing building and nearby vegetation constraints, as well as fuel reduction 3. Spreading the risk over a larger area. By allowing shared responsibility for readiness between fire agencies as well as residents 4. Managing the residual risk by implementing fire suppression plans, community and agency readiness as well as emergency response in case of an incident.

The land manager is also required to monitor and review any risks and risk treatment strategies over time. This is to ensure that they remain relevant and effective against constantly changing environments and climates. They must also finally communicate and consult their findings and analysis as it is critically important at each stage of the process for the population to be aware of the results. The people responsible for implementing risk management and anyone with a vested interest must understand the basis on which risk management decisions are made and why particular actions are required to be undertaken. Creating ownership of any plan is critical to successful implementation within the community. To better plan and manage our environments from the danger of fire implementing a network of long term ecological research sites, such as what is being undertaken at Jervis Bay to monitor the impacts of fire regimes and fire events should be setup. As well as the continued categorization of actual fire behaviour and the ecological responses of different environments to fire and fire regimes, to better inform land and fire management authorities. Furthermore additional climate and climate change research should be investigated into the consequences of weather and climate alterations for fire regimes and impacts on the environment, combined with the ecological response of the environment to this change. The establishment and maintenance of a nationally uniform database relevant to bushfires and the incorporation of this information into adaptive management processes which uses current GIS software to accurately model environments and predictions. Campaigns for a greater knowledge of building design and materials which can raise awareness to minimise risks to life and property should be funded and taught at all levels of education. Combine these ideas with an improvement in coordination between the Australian, state and territory governments, and between agencies in each jurisdiction concerning fire management, mitigation and policies (Ellis et al. 2004). As well as the continued adoption of a strictly controlled risk management process to ensure the most appropriate support system for planning in relation to fires, and for preparedness, awareness and response to incidents. This will alleviate some of the annual damage caused by fire as the risk management approach centres attention on the circumstance in which fires originate and informs the local community of the risk to its assets, the environment, and the available resources for mitigation and response.

Ellis, S, Kanowski, P and Whelan, RJ 2004, National Inquiry on Bushfire Mitigation and Management, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra,

www.coagbushfireenquiry.gov.au/report/docs/full-report.doc Whelan, R, Kanowski, P, Gill, M, Andersen, A, 2006, Living in a land of fire http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/getdoc/083bcc2b-2956-42fc-a560a9177f8d52bb/RSCH.016.001.0663.pdf Cary, G., Lindenmayer, D. and Dovers, S. (eds.) (2003). Australia Burning Fire Ecology, Policy and Management Issues. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne. http://books.google.com.au/books? hl=en&lr=&id=t2FZryJtlmwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Cary,+G.,+Lindenmayer,+D. +and+Dovers,+S.+(eds.)+(2003).+Australia+Burning+%E2%80%90+Fire+Ecology, +Policy+and&ots=54D8IPYSox&sig=Em66irY5BRzMOH1YeX4qYI3yjaI#v=onepage &q&f=false Bradstock, R.A., Williams, J.E. and Gill, A.M. (eds.) (2002). Flammable Australia The Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. http://books.google.com.au/books? hl=en&lr=&id=4f8anIoS33MC&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=Bradstock,+R.A.,+Williams, +J.E.+and+Gill,+A.M.+(eds.)+(2002).+Flammable+Australia+ %E2%80%90+The+Regimes+and&ots=kDjrN0t3sl&sig=AAcXxqVE592FG6QcqK7_ CNPL5Qo#v=onepage&q=Bradstock%2C%20R.A.%2C%20Williams%2C%20J.E. %20and%20Gill%2C%20A.M.%20(eds.)%20(2002).%20Flammable%20Australia %20%E2%80%90%20The%20Regimes%20and&f=false

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