Fuel Management

Parks and Conservation Service (PCS) implements an extensive ongoing bushfire fuel management program. Fuel management can reduce fire behaviour and severity, improve fire fighter safety, increase the probability of suppression and reduce the impacts of bushfires on natural and built assets. The three means for managing bushfire fuels are reduction, removal and conversion to a less flammable type, and are achieved by undertaking the following activities:

Prescribed Burning

Prescribed burning involves the controlled application of fire under specified environmental conditions to a predetermined area and at a time, intensity and rate of spread required to attain planned resource management objectives (AFAC 1997).

These objectives may include habitat management, fuel reduction, species regeneration or maintenance of ecosystem health. Fuel reduction burning generally aims to reduce the amount of ground fuels including grass, leaf litter and twigs, elevated fuels, including dead suspended fuel material and shrub layers in forests as well as bark on trees. As far as possible fuel reduction burns and biodiversity management objectives are aligned.

Notification of prescribed burns undertaken by PCS are placed on the TAMS media release webpage. For information on the status of bushfires burning in the ACT refer to the ACT Emergency Services Agency 

Grazing

Grazing impacts on fuel levels by physically removing fuel and then compacting the remaining fuel. It may be used to reduce fuels through routine agricultural production or through specifically targeted strategic grazing to meet fuel management objectives.

Strategic grazing programs must consider target grass fuel loads for the introduction and completion of grazing programs, the overall management objectives of the land, the height, cover and type of grass and other fuels present as well as the surrounding fuels on both urban and rural sides of the interface.

Slashing and Mowing

Slashing and mowing of grasses is commonly used in urban-rural interface areas, with strips (generally 10 - 30m wide) maintained near assets as well as roadsides.

Grasses are generally maintained at specified heights, and the treatment aims to create a fuel reduced zone immediately adjacent to the urban edge and other assets.

Slashing and mowing programs for fuel management generally commences as grass curing or drying and may be repeated several times during a fire season, depending on grass growth reaching predetermined thresholds.

Physical Removal

Physical removal of fuels refers to the removal or reduction of fuels through the use of machinery and/or physical labour. Vegetation may be removed by hand or machine felled, and material may be chipped on site or taken away whole.

The physical removal, thinning and pruning of tree, shrub and litter fuels is undertaken to reduce high fuel loads adjacent to assets.

Physical removal treatments are generally very expensive and may be used to create a vegetation structure that is more easily maintained by other treatments (eg slashing or burning) in the future.

Fire Trails

Land and emergency management agencies in Australia and overseas recognise the importance of an access network to support bushfire management activities. Ground and aerial access provides a platform for reduction and readiness activities, and provides opportunities to contain fires often before they escalate into major fires that would otherwise incur significant costs of suppression and potentially significant losses to community, cultural and environmental values.

Fire access must provide for safe and effective fire mitigation by reducing the risk of unplanned fires and providing access networks which increasing readiness and decrease response times and environmental impacts.