Implementing Australia's largest non-Government fire program. The primary objective of AWC's Northern fire program is to measurably reduce the frequency and extent of late season wildfires on a vast, landscape-scale. This objective is achieved through the delivery of prescribed burning operations across 7.5 million hectares covering multiple tenures, including AWC land, indigenous land and commercial pastoral land. Eco-fire is a template for best-practice fire management in northern Australia.
Traditionally, fire patterns across northern Australia were characterized by smaller, 'cooler,' patchy burns across the landscape. Changes in land use and the failure of government fire management programs have led to a shift in fire regimes across northern Australia. Fire patterns are now dominated by more extensive, high-intensity, late dry season wildfires that can burn more than 1 million hectares every 1-3 years, crippling habitats and desimating wildlife populations.
The project is a template for best-practice fire management in northern Australia and, since 2007, neighbouring pastoralists and Indigenous communities have been closely involved in the design and delivery of the prescribed burning program. The outcomes are exceptional: The incidence of late dry season wildfires has been halved; and The area burnt in extensive late seasonfires has been reduced from 90% to 20-40%. These results are delivering substantial benefits for native plants and animals
AWC has significantly reduced wildfires across all our north Australian properties. Not only is this great news for biodiversity - it also has significant co-benefits for climate change. In 2019 the reduction in wildfires across our northern properties avoided more than 130,000 tonnes of carbon from being emitted into the atmosphere. The savings in greenhouse gases going into the environment is equivalent to removing more than 37,500 vehicles off the road annually. Help us scale up this work.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
