Actually there is some evidence the large contiguous areas are more
vulnerable to the effect of a landscape-scale fire than small patches which
are isolated by cleared land. Even when they do burn the small lots tend not
to be all lost.
About 30% of Wathe Flora & Fauna Reserve was burnt in (I think) 2007. The
following breeding season one of our monitoring sites that had escaped the
fire had 8 active malleefowl mounds, as against 3 before the fire -
seemingly because the birds were squashed into a smaller amount of habitat.
It's a reasonable assumption that this might not be sustainable, and that
some birds will move away or be lost to the breeding population, but it's
also a good sign that a population will be there to re-colonise the burnt
sections in 10-20 years' time when the canopy and leaf litter recover. We
have seen this happen already in Wandown FFR which was burnt in the early
90s.
In contrast, if you have a fire scar that's 50km wide and 30km north to
south, as you do after the 2002 Big Desert fire, it might be generations
before some species can re-colonise the centre of it. Centuries even, if
they have low dispersal rates like Mallee emu-wrens.
Sorry, bit of a hobby-horse of mine...
-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Veerman
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2013 5:49 PM
To: 'Birding-aus'
Subject: the fire hazard reduction program
How about the important issue that pre 1788 there was vast areas of natural
habitat types, e.g. mallee. Patch burning would impact small areas and most
animals had plenty of suitable habitat to move to for a while and many
successional stages could exist. Now natural habitat types are often
isolated patches, segregated by farmland, timber harvesting, urbanisation,
etc. Thus patch burning now has a totally different meaning from pre 1788,
because a patch can be most of an isolated remnant.
Philip
-----Original Message-----From:
On Behalf Of John Leonard
Sent: Friday, 6 September 2013 8:00 AM To: Birding-aus Subject: Re:
[Birding-Aus] the fire hazard reduction program
I think the basic problem is that you had a large workforce of people on
land managing it the whole time by mosaic burning. Since then the workforce
on the land has dwindled to such an extent that such a burning regime is now
impossible and all that can be achieved are very small scale conservation
burns, when funding, and wisdom, is available, and cosmetic and destructive
'hazard reduction burns' which are haphazard.
John Leonard
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