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About the Burning for Biodiversity project
Background
The vast majority of bushfires in Australia occur in the savanna landscapes of the tropical north, where bushfire issues relate primarily to landscape management rather than protection of life and property. Most of the fires are lit by people, including conservation managers, pastoralists and traditional Aboriginal land owners. It is clear that regional fire regimes have changed over the past 50 years following disruption of traditional Aboriginal burning practises, and alarming population declines in various plant and animal species have been attributed to such change.
However, the effects of different fire regimes on biodiversity remain a matter of considerable scientific debate. Such scientific uncertainty is accompanied by a high degree of public confusion and lack of understanding of the importance of fire in northern Australian landscapes. Most visitors and residents alike come from a temperate background where fire is viewed as a destructive agent to be feared, rather than as an important tool for landscape management.
Results from CSIRO's recently completed landscape-scale fire experiment at Kapalga in Kakadu National Park indicate that fire frequency, and more particularly time-since-fire, is far more important than previously thought. There is a pressing need for further research on the importance of fire frequency and time-since-fire for ecological function and conservation management in northern Australia.
The Burning for Biodiversity project at the Territory Wildlife Park tackles these two main issues:
- Improving understanding of effects of fire on biodiversity
- Increasing public awareness and education of fire in Northern Australia
Who is involved?
This new combined fire research and education facility is part of the national Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, and involves collaboration between the Northern Territory Government, CSIRO, and Charles Darwin University.
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