Abstract for presentation at Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference - A Pacific Response

One of northern Australia’s most pressing environmental problems is unmanaged fire. The current paradigm steering fire management is that there has been an increase in the intensity, frequency and scale of fires since the cessation of traditional Aboriginal burning. Of particular concern are late dry season fires, which are perceived to be more intense, (and therefore more damaging), and cover wider areas. To combat these fires, land managers have long advocated the need to frequently burn large areas of the landscape early in the dry season (March-May), to break-up fuel loads.

However, despite being such an important tool for such a critical conservation issue, the ecological effects of early dry season burning are poorly understood. Fire ecology studies to date have focused on the patterns of species’ responses to different fire treatments. While these phenomenological studies have revealed some important results (e.g. the fire sensitivity of mammals, regardless of the time of year fires occur), they have done little to advance our understanding of the mechanisms of species’ responses to fire. Consequently, as land managers we are still poorly placed to judge the relative merits of early dry versus late dry season burning.

I present results of a study investigating the mechanistic effects of prescribed burning on fire sensitive fauna. I have used red-backed fairy-wrens as a model to examine the precise mechanisms behind why population persist, decline or go extinct. Here I describe the short-term effects of prescribed burning, including immediate post-fire survival, changes to individual fitness, changes in territory size and shape, impacts on habitat use, and the effects on pair maintenance and social interactions. This work is part of an on-going project that will compare these early dry season prescribed fires to late dry season wildfires. These future directions will also be presented.