John O’Donnell 24 June 2025
The author considers that current fire management approaches across SE Australia landscapes are failing and, in many cases, have failed.
The current state and federal fire interval approaches focus on individual species, a large number of listed threatened flora and fauna species and communities, reduced fire return frequencies and inadequate assessment of the consequences of not burning.
As an example, across NSW, prescribed burning of forested areas has an average of 0.6 % of forests per year over the last seven years.
Prescribed burning in most states is at low levels, except for WA. The graphs in the link article below highlight the value of prescribed burning in reducing bushfire extent across Australian states, the data is over 60 years.
The adopted fire regimes and approaches result in widespread high intensity bushfires in these same areas where low intensity fires are restricted, and often result in major bushfire impacts, social and safety impacts, environmental impacts and economic impacts.
It is essential that all the impacts and costs of failed and failing fire regimes in SE Australia and associated intense bushfires are assessed to adequately understand the scale of bushfire impacts, social and safety impacts, environmental impacts and economic impacts.
This assessment has assessed the impacts of large and intense bushfires across SE Australia.
Severe impacts on ecosystems in the Blue Mountains area, 4 years after the 2019/ 20 bushfires. Note the dense understorey and the large amount of dead timber.
Hazardous smoke conditions in the Tumbarumba on 5 January 2020, in this case during bushfire mopping up. These conditions were common during that long bushfire period, common for firefighters and emergency personnel.
Bushfire disaster impacts across SE Australia are outlined in Sections 2.1 to 2.5.
Social and safety bushfire impacts across SE Australia are outlined in Sections 3.1 to 3.7.
Environmental bushfire impacts across SE Australia are outlined in Sections 4.1 to 4.15.
Economic bushfire impacts across SE Australia are outlined in Sections 5.1 to 5.5.
The full assessment is included here.
The impacts are across 32 different impact areas, and intense and severe impacts for the majority of them.
The scale of the combined impacts are very large. It’s time for effective action to reduce intense bushfires across SE Australia.
It is important that governments at all levels commence adequately addressing these impacts and utilise fire mitigation much better in scale, distribution and funding.