From hectares to tailor-made solutions for risk mitigation: systems to deliver effective prescribed burning across ecosystems

Prescribed burning in Australia, currently stands at a cross roads. The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission recommended an annual treatment target of 5% of public land in Victoria. Subsequently, concerns have been formally raised (e.g. Bushfires Royal Commission Implementation Monitor 2013 Annual Report) that such an area-based target may not deliver the most effective levels of risk reduction for people and property in Victoria. Concurrently, some other States have adopted such a prescribed burning target, but formal attempts to evaluate its effects on risk to people, property and environmental values across different jurisdictions are lacking. Such extrapolation of the 2009 BFRC recommendation pre-supposes that there is a “one-size fits all” solution to the problem. While many agencies are moving toward planning systems supposedly based on risk assessment, knowledge of the best way to use prescribed fire to reduce risk to key values is generally lacking.