6 stages of prescribed burning

You might know a lit­tle – or even a lot – about pre­scribed burns that are car­ried out by Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice every year.

They’re all about min­imis­ing the risk and impact of bush­fires by clev­er­ly, not to men­tion care­ful­ly, reduc­ing fuel loads in at-risk areas, man­ag­ing native veg­e­ta­tion and pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty in South Aus­trali­a’s parks and reserves.

But do you know just what this entails?

It’s not as sim­ple as strik­ing a match, cross­ing your fin­gers and hop­ing for the best.

From con­duct­ing flo­ra and fau­na sur­veys to pro­tect habi­tats, to fig­ur­ing out where fire trucks need to be posi­tioned, and ulti­mate­ly see­ing the land regen­er­ate, here’s every­thing you need to know about the pre­scribed burn­ing process.

Stage 1: Work­ing out the best place to con­duct a burn is the first step. Dur­ing the plan­ning process, fire man­age­ment offi­cers assess the risk to near­by assets like homes and farms to make sure that the pre­scribed burn will reduce the risk to these prop­er­ties if there’s a bushfire.

Stage 2: Sur­veys are under­tak­en to iden­ti­fy impor­tant plants, ani­mals and cul­tur­al sites that need to be pro­tect­ed. In these instances, the pre­scribed burn is planned in such a way that cer­tain parcels of land, home to these vul­ner­a­ble species or pre­cious sites, are kept out of the fire.

Stage 3: The loca­tion of fire trucks and crew are planned months in advance so every­one stays safe when the burn is under­way. Care­ful thought goes into the type of vehi­cles to use and how many are need­ed, as well as how many crew need to be on hand. This all makes sure the burn is con­duct­ed safe­ly and with­out escapes.

Stage 4: It’s not just the roll of a dice that deter­mines when a pre­scribed burn will hap­pen. Expe­ri­enced fire crew look close­ly at weath­er pat­terns to fig­ure out the safest and most effec­tive time to get out into the field. Gen­er­al­ly autumn and spring are the best sea­sons to burn in.

Stage 5: The pre­scribed burn­ing day has arrived. There’s a lot that needs to be ticked off the check­list for the burn to go ahead. Weath­er is the most impor­tant fac­tor for safe burn­ing, which includes appro­pri­ate wind direc­tion and speed, rel­a­tive humid­i­ty, tem­per­ate and fuel mois­ture. A test burn is car­ried out before the real thing takes place. Once the pre­scribed burn is extin­guished the area is mon­i­tored for days after.

Stage 6: In the months fol­low­ing a pre­scribed burn, plants regrow and ani­mals return. By intro­duc­ing fire into a land­scape at the right time, a range of plants and ani­mals are helped with seed ger­mi­na­tion stim­u­lat­ed or the right kind of habi­tat struc­ture pro­vid­ed. Fire man­age­ment offi­cers mon­i­tor this land­scape and also make sure that any nec­es­sary treat­ments are under­tak­en, such as weeding.

You can find out where and when pre­scribed burns are hap­pen­ing near you.

The exper­tise for this high­ly skilled work resides in the South Aus­tralian Depart­ment for Envi­ron­ment and Water (DEW). DEW is also a brigade of the Coun­try Fire Service.

All images cour­tesy of George Aldridge.

This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed in May 2016.