Planning for prescribed burning

Effectiveness of prescribed burning and wildfire control

Experience over a wide range of weather conditions and vegetation types has shown that the direct attack on wildfires that have flame heights of more than three meters or where fires are moving faster than approximately 200 metres per hour (in forest) is not likely to succeed. Fire behaviour is directly affected by the quantity of available fuel, and there is a good chance that direct attack on the flanks of a fire will succeed where fires run into recently burnt areas.

The very large fire of 9 - 11 of January 2003 south of Perth near Mt Cooke that affected unique rocky outcrop communities and threatened farms to the east, would have far more extensive if prescribed burns undertaken in the previous five years had not been present at strategic locations in this fire prone area.

Planning for prescribed burning

Prescribed fire is a very deliberative process. Careful planning is undertaking to determine why, when and how a prescribed burn will be undertaken. Planning for prescribed fire is undertaken for lands the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) manages across the entire State. DEC uses prescribed fire across the State to achieve land management objectives involving:

• The conservation of biodiversity,
• The management of wildfire risk,
• The management of vegetation and
• The development of new knowledge.

Planning for prescribed fire considers the history and variety of past fire events over the landscape to determine the most appropriate place and time to apply fire to achieve these land management objectives.

Planning to apply prescribed fire must consider many issues before determining the location, extent, timing and prescription parameters for any particular burn. When fire planning involves issues associated with the management of dieback disease, fauna species habitat, rare flora, mining rehabilitation or using fire as a silvicultural treatment, five to eight year lead times may be required to ensure all preparation and pre-burn planning steps are completed.