Fire, forests and fauna (The 2020 Krebs Lecture)

Abstract

This article discusses some of the key themes on wildfires in forests and their effects on fauna that I explored in the 2020 Krebs lecture at the University of Canberra. The lecture examined my personal perspectives on such topics as (1) climate change and fire, (2) the role of hazard reduction burning in mitigating house loss from wildfires, (3) how logging can elevate the risks of high-severity wildfire, (4) the ways in which the structure and age of a forest at the time it is burnt has marked impacts on post-fire recovery, (5) the ecological damage caused by post-fire (salvage) logging, and (6) aspects of post-fire species recovery. Perspectives on these topics are informed largely by long-term work in the wet forests of Victoria and the coastal forests and woodlands in the Jervis Bay Territory and neighbouring southern New South Wales. Some key policy and land management responses to wildfires are outlined, including (1) the urgent need to tackle climate change, (2) better targeting of hazard reduction burning close to human infrastructure, (3) the removal of conventional logging and post-fire (salvage) logging from native forests, (4) the substantial expansion of the old growth forest estate, and (5) the establishment of dedicated long-term monitoring to gather the empirical data needed to quantify responses to wildfires.