Bulletin

Issue: March 2006

Research in Action

Safeguarding wildlife – the burning question

How do we ensure that animals and plants survive and thrive after the fires which periodically sweep through Australia’s Mallee scrub region? La Trobe University is helping inaugurate and carry out a new $1.2 million four-year research project to identify ways to manage fire to best maintain biodiversity.

La Trobe Associate Professor in Zoology, Dr Michael Clarke, is joint leader of the Mallee Fire and Biodiversity Project, with Associate Professor Dr Andrew Bennett, from Deakin University.

The project will examine the effects of fire on a wide range of animals and plants across several hundred square kilometres of Mallee country near the borders of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.

‘There is widespread acceptance in Australia that fire is a natural component of the landscape and, clearly, fire is essential for some plants like banksias and some eucalypts to reproduce,’ says Dr Clarke.

‘However, other plants and animals are threatened if fires are too frequent, too intense or too widespread. Mallee fowl prefer mallee that has not been burned for at least 20 years and Black eared Miners reach highest densities in mallee that has been unburnt for over 40 years,’ Dr Clarke said.

‘Fire management policy across the three States has been to work towards creating a “mosaic” of vegetation of differing ages since last burnt within each park to cater for the diverse needs of wildlife.

‘The question we seek to answer is which “mosaics” are desirable when trying to conserve wildlife, and which should be avoided. This is of vital importance to land managers across Australia, but particularly in fire-prone habitats like the Mallee.

‘Whether current ecological burning and fire suppression strategies will conserve biodiversity and protect threatened groups of plants and animals is an absolutely critical question. These approaches rely heavily on the assumption that if a diversity of plant communities of varying ages since the last fire is maintained in a “mosaic” across a reserve, the conservation of fauna will also be achieved.

‘However, there is increasing evidence that this is often not the case, due to the very different needs of animals compared to plants,’ Dr Clarke said.

The Mallee Fire and Biodiversity Project builds on the successful conclusion of a ten-year La Trobe study of the ecology of the endangered Black-eared Miner, and other threatened birds indigenous to the Mallee area.

Following that project, Drs Clarke and Bennett held a seminar in Mildura outlining their concerns about protecting biodiversity in the Mallee.

This led to seven state and federal agencies supporting the research: the Mallee and the Lower Murray-Darling Catchment Management Authorities; Land and Water Australia; Parks Victoria; and the departments of Sustainability and Environment in Victoria, Heritage and Environment in South Australia, and Environment and Conservation in NSW.

Members of the project team, experts in taxonomy, will examine the impact of different configurations of vegetation age classes on fauna and flora on 28 blocks, each measuring ten by two kilometres.

Other members of the La Trobe team include zoologists Professor Tim New and Dr Brian Malone and botanist, Dr John Morgan. They will help supervise four La Trobe and two Deakin PhD students carrying out research on birds, mammals, reptiles, invertebrates and plants.

The project will develop GIS-based decision tools to allow managers to visualise and assess the ecological value of different fire mosaics. GIS stands for Geographical Information System, computer technology that manages, analyses, and disseminates geographic knowledge.

Other outcomes will include new insights into the configurations of habitat necessary to maintain biodiversity, extensive new ecological data sets for state and national wildlife atlases for the Mallee, and new ecological skills for agency staff.

The research also aims to assist studies of complementary questions like impacts of fox control, closure of watering points and individual groups of threatened flora and fauna.

In addition, the researchers hope the project will lead to increased inter-state collaboration, information sharing and more strategic landscape-scale planning for the benefit of all wildlife.