Ecological Impacts of Fire

Understanding the ecological effects of fire helps us to conserve our rich diversity of plants and animals.

Natural fire regimes

Australian plants and animals have developed particular responses that allow them to survive in specific fire regimes. Changing fire regimes and other environmental pressures can impact on their ability to adapt which could lead to their extinction.

Natural fire regimes can be altered through:

• overly effective fire suppression
• repeated prescribed burning at a low intensity in the wrong season
• too frequent burning caused by arson
• escaped campfire or hazard reduction burns.

It is important to maintain a natural fire regime as much as possible to conserve biodiversity and reduce the hazard of catastrophic bushfires.

How does the native environment cope with fire?

Fire:

• Heats the soil, cracking hard seed coats and triggering germination
• Triggers woody seed pods held in the canopy to open, releasing seed onto a fresh and fertile ash bed
• Clears thick understorey reducing competition for seedlings
• Encourages new growth that is food for many animals
• Creates hollows in logs and trees that are used by animals for nesting and shelter

But it can also:

• Burn vegetation communities such as a rainforest that takes hundreds of years to recover
• Kill threatened species
• Cause erosion and sedimentation of creeks and wetlands
• Open up areas to the impacts of weeds and feral animal invasion, as well as human access and vandalism