Fire

The WA rangelands experience problematic fire regimes consisting of overly large and intense wildfires.

This fire negatively impacts infrastructure and property, biodiversity values (wildlife and vegetation), conservation assets, land condition, grazing productivity, cultural heritage sites, visitor safety and places of national significance. Lack of shelter for small mammals so vulnerable to feral animals.

For thousands of years, Aboriginals lit fires mainly to help them hunt and to promote resources that they depending on. Their fires were mostly quite small and of low intensity. However, over recent decades this traditional management has been lost in many parts of Australia and as a result, fire patterns have become out of balance, with a boom-bust wildfire cycle, with frequent intense and extensive fires, sometimes covering over one million hectares.

Fire leadership group

There is a need for active and coordinated cross-sector fire management to protect rangelands values: biodiversity; communities and culture; economic; pastoral value; and tourism.

Rangelands NRM, in collaboration with the Rangelands Fire Leadership Group partners–Department of Parks and Wildlife (DPaW), Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES), Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa (KJ) and Kimberley Pilbara Cattleman’s Association (KPCA)–is actively working to bring back a balance.

Download the Guiding Principles for fire management in the Western Australian rangelandsGuiding-