By Peter Robertson, campaigner at South West Forests Defence Foundation Inc.
Issue: DBCA prescribed burning and fire management practices
Location: Southwest WA native forests; other WA ecosystems
Risk: The loss of fauna including threatened species; destruction of habitat and ecosystems; promotion of a more fire-prone environment; impact on forest dependent industries and release of unregulated greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the most serious threats to Western Australia’s biodiversity and other environmental, community and economic values, especially in the context of climate change, is the fire management practices of DBCA.
DBCA’s approach to fire management, across all ecosystems on all categories of land for which it is responsible under the CALM Act, focuses on its annual program of prescribed burning, resulting in large-scale, frequent and repetitive burning of millions of hectares of varied natural ecosystems every year. This is conducted without adequate independent expert scientific or community input before, during or after it occurs.
DBCA’s five-page ‘Fire Management Strategy’ has as its number one objective ‘fuel management’, which means prescribed burning.
DBCA’s annual prescribed burning program is based on ‘fuel load’ and burn area targets (e.g., 200,000 ha per annum in the southwest forest regions) that have been challenged in multiple scientific studies (Zylstra et al, 2022). The program is very costly*; comes with significant community safety risks (e.g., pressure to burn under dangerous fire weather conditions); causes significant unregulated greenhouse gas emissions **; damages habitats and ecosystems and kills threatened species ; harms human health (via smoke) (Borchers Arriagada et al, 2020), and impacts important industries like honey and wine production and tourism.
One of the functions of the WA Conservation and Parks Commission (WACPC) under the CALM Act is to conduct periodic ‘performance assessments’ of the implementation of forest management plans. In 2012 the WACPC published a review of the biodiversity outcomes of prescribed burning in the southern forests. This report made a series of findings critical of DBCA’s approach to prescribed burning across the forest region, such as, “there is a lack of planning detail on habitat goals for declared rare fauna species known to be within the burn boundaries.” It is unclear which if any adverse findings have been addressed by DBCA.
In 2004, the EPA undertook a review of the prescribed burning practices of the Department of Conservation and Land Management in the southwest forest regions. Since then, repeated requests for a review – amid worsening climate conditions and other threats – have been consistently declined. As recently as December 2024 the EPA refused to assess a specific DBCA planned burn in the Tingle forests near Walpole, arguing that under current legislation the issue had been sufficiently assessed as part of the Forest Management Plan 2024-2033 .
Recommendations
- Mandate periodic and rigorous assessment of DBCA’s annual prescribed burning program by a well-resourced and independent EPA.
- Implement more cost-effective, safer and less destructive approaches to fire management over prescribed burning, in particular, early detection and rapid suppression of unplanned fires before they become wildfires. Require full transparency on reasons to utilise prescribed burning instead of alternatives.
- Prohibit fire-sensitive and long-unburnt ecosystems from inclusion in DBCA’s annual prescribed burning program. DBCA’s unnatural fire regimes threaten ecological communities such as EPBC-listed Empodisma peat swamps in the Walpole Wilderness Area and Red, Yellow and Rate’s tingle forests. Areas of long-unburnt forest, woodland, heathland and wetland should be protected as a baseline against which to measure impacts and as habitat for species that rely on long intervals between fires.
(See Recommendation 9 under ‘ Review Prescribed Burning in the Southwest of WA ’.)
Citations
Zylstra, P. J, Bradshaw, S. D., & Lindenmayer, D. B. (2022). ‘Self-thinning forest understoreys reduce wildfire risk, even in a warming climate.’ Environ. Res. Lett. 17, 044022.10.1088/1748-9326/ac5c10
Borchers Arriagada, N., Palmer, A. J., Bowman, D. M. J. S., & Johnston, F. H. (2020). ‘Exceedances of national air quality standards for particulate matter in Western Australia: sources and health-related impacts.’ Med. J. Aust. 213(6), p.280-281. 10.5694/mja2.50547
* DBCA annual report 2023-2024 reported spending was "$55,493,000 in last financial year for prescribed burning and fire management."
** The South West Forests Defence Foundation estimate that "200 000 ha of prescribed burning in South-west forests would emit approximately 8 million tonnes of GHG per year."