Black Summer: the 2019-20 Bushfires

The Editors of the scientific journal Australian Forestry have reviewed the state of our knowledge of the causes and environmental consequences of the devastating bushfires that disfigured the 2019-20 summer with the loss of 33 lives and 3,100 homes [LINK HERE].

The Black Summer bushfires burnt an area totalling 10.2 million hectares. This consisted of native forest, commercial plantations, and other forest areas. The estimates were prepared for Australian Forestry by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) using the National Forest Inventory and other Australian Government spatial datasets.

Some 8.2 million hectares were burnt areas of native forest — equivalent to 6 per cent of all Australian native forest — mostly in nature conservation reserves and multiple-use public forests. These varied by State but were concentrated in NSW, Victoria and WA.

The Australian Forestry Editors conclude that the 2019-20 bushfires provide important insights into, and raise profound questions about, land management generally and, in particular, the management of bushfire risk through regular prescribed burning on all types of land tenure.

On the latter point they note that:

“…the current fire management will not, or is unlikely to, sustain the full range of ecosystem processes and biodiversity, nor reduce to an acceptable level the impact of wildfires on local and rural communities, forests and ecological communities, biodiversity and wood resources.”