Pilots are being pressured to fly into potentially dangerous fire scenarios or where aircraft would provide little benefit, despite worsening aerial firefighting safety risks, according to a newly released survey conducted by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
The federal agency conducted interviews with nine firefighting aircraft operators and 11 fire agency representatives from around Australia to understand the current safety risks in the field. It notes that since 2016, the ATSB has commenced 17 investigations involving aerial firefighting aircraft with incidents steadily increasing.
“Additionally, the ATSB has received anecdotal reports from aerial firefighting pilots and operators concerned about the way activities are coordinated and unsafe tasking. These reports also indicated that many do not want to report occurrences to the ATSB as it may affect their potential to win contracts with firefighting agencies,” the report notes.
The results showed that how safe the industry feels largely depends on who you ask, and both the safety and occupational risks they face.
The majority of aerial firefighting operators said they didn’t feel that agencies valued their safety and had a negative “safety culture.” This contrasted with the answers given by fire agency representatives, who claimed safety had “always been very much at the forefront” of their operations.
“Interviewees perceived a lack of understanding of aviation safety and risk management among senior fire agency personnel across states and territories,” the surveyors said. “Interviewees’ understanding of who was accountable for aerial firefighting safety varied, indicating a lack of clarity on this issue.”
A similar disparity was found in how operators and agency representatives viewed the pressure placed on pilots to fly. While every interviewee acknowledged there was some pressure to fly, they differed on where that pressure came from.
Firefighting operators largely blamed their pressure to fly on agency personnel, describing both overt pressure and implicit pressure like being asked to “take a look” at flight conditions. The responses from agency representatives said the exact opposite, claiming the agencies placed no pressure on pilots and instead blamed either more senior agency personnel or public and political pressure.
“Interviewees believed this was because aircraft, especially LATs, are a very powerful visual representation of agencies’ and governments’ response to bushfires,” the surveyors said. “Three of these interviewees specifically mentioned public or political pressure to fly relating to LATs.”
Numerous interviewees said operators would feel safer if fire agencies enhanced their management and developed a just, learning, reporting, informed and flexible safety culture. A shared desire for standardisation and formilization of policies and procedures was also present in the responses.
“This desire was expressed in relation to aircraft coordination, communication, training, pilot performance, and the identification of risk and monitoring of changing conditions,” Bureau Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said in a press release regarding the report.
The survey is part of an ongoing ATSB safety study into Australia’s growing aerial firefighting sector. While findings and recommendations will be saved for the final report, this survey report identified 18 key safety themes.
Around 500 aircraft provided by over 150 operators are used in aerial firefighting operations across Australia.
An Air-Crane helicopter drops muddy water on one of the fires in the East Gippsland region of Victoria, December 30, 2019. Photo by Ned Dawson for Victoria State Government.
A conversation with Trevor Howard, National Manager Prescribed Burning Strategy, AFAC and President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, with AFAC Deputy CEO and Executive Director, Strategy, People and Performance Erin Liston-Abel.
This article first appeared in Fire Australia Magazine, Issue 1, 2026
Could you please tell us a bit about your career in the sector and your current responsibilities as National Manager, Prescribed Burning Strategy at AFAC?
From an early age my ambition was to work in the bush and have a life of adventure. My career started in forestry in Queensland in December 1975. I’ve since worked with land management agencies and rural fire services across the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia in operations and program management. Along the way I completed a degree in anthropology and worked with traditional owners across northern and central Australia. I’ve also been involved in numerous major incidents, as an incident management team member and state agency commander as well as conducting post-incident reviews, preparing inquiry submissions, addressing recommendations and managing organisational change.
After many years in an agency contributing to the AFAC National Burning Project, I joined AFAC in 2022. My role has three focus areas: 1) supporting member agencies with program and operational reviews, and advice on policy, research utilisation, risk management and operational best practice, 2) developing new initiatives to address workforce changes and declining national capability, especially for complex prescribed burning, and 3) engaging with national NGOs and other organisations involved in supporting and using fire for conservation, forestry, agriculture, emissions abatement and Indigenous livelihoods. I’m fortunate to be hosted at the Bushfire Centre of Excellence in Western Australia by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. DFES is a unique organisation leading fire and other hazards across a vast state spanning southern forests, central deserts and tropical savannas, as well as managing a large aerial burning program in the Kimberley and an innovative Cultural Fire Program.
I’m also President of the International Association of Wildland Fire.
Source: International Association of Wildland Fire
Throughout your career, have you noticed many changes in prescribed burning practices?
Several things characterised the 1970s when my career started. Forestry had been the leader in fire science, innovation in equipment and technology, and a professional approach to prescribed burning and bushfire management. The use of fire by farmers, graziers and pastoralists was widespread, and departments of agriculture conducted research into fire, pastures and production and supported primary producers with extension programs. Rural fire services played a similar role in supporting community-based brigades and land managers. Society was generally more aware of rural matters and supportive of prescribed burning, but there was very little understanding or acknowledgement of Aboriginal burning.
While the grass still grows and forest fuels still accumulate, the major changes have been in rural land use, a growing urban interface, organisational arrangements including the decline of forestry and the dominance of fire and emergency services, increasing environmental regulations, and divergent socio-political viewpoints. Many operational practices continue, largely unchanged, but there are now increased constraints requiring careful and sometimes protracted planning and approvals, as well as attracting greater scrutiny. There are many positive changes including an emphasis on safety, equipment design, and multi-disciplinary science including a much closer relationship with meteorologists, some of whom are embedded in agencies to support burn programs. The historical use of fire by local people is now returning to many landscapes with the rightful recognition of Indigenous connections to land and the importance of cultural burning.
With climate change bringing more intense and frequent extreme weather, and as the higher risk weather season becomes longer, how are the emergency services adapting prescribed burning practices?
Adapting prescribed burning to the uncertainties of weather, seasons and climate change is perhaps one of our greatest challenges. On one hand, prescribed burning is becoming even more important for protecting humans, infrastructure, livelihoods and ecosystems from the impacts of extreme wildfires, while on the other hand increased governance and scrutiny can be a barrier to organisational agility. There’s an ongoing need to optimise approaches to burn programs, burn preparation and operational planning, to maximise windows of opportunity which may occur unexpectedly. There is some progress in this area, but much more needs to be done, including research and development for better seasonal outlooks, forecasts and decision support tools specifically for prescribed burning.
How do different agencies work together on prescribed burns and how important is interagency collaboration?
Each jurisdiction has made significant progress with interagency collaboration and interoperability. With land management agencies having diverse portfolios, including nature conservation, recreation and visitor management, marine parks and wildlife regulation, fire management is just one activity. Likewise, fire and emergency services deal with multiple disciplines and hazards as well as protracted year-round events including cyclones, floods and bushfires, so resources and capacity can be stretched. Working together is not an option, it is essential. We see the benefits of interstate and international resource sharing, well-managed year-round by the National Resource Sharing Centre. Resource sharing for prescribed burning is the next frontier which could bring enormous benefits, not just in managing fuels and protecting communities and the environment, but in the sharing of expertise across jurisdictions.
How is Indigenous cultural fire knowledge incorporated into prescribed burning practices?
While both prescribed burning and Indigenous cultural burning are concerned with putting fire into the landscape, Indigenous burning involves a unique connection to Country that has been informed by thousands of years of traditional beliefs and values, shared understandings of human-environment relationships, the intergenerational transfer of knowledge, and the responsibility for ongoing stewardship. Like a doctor prescribing medicine for a particular ailment, prescribed burning is often purpose-driven, planned and formulated according to empirical science and derived models.
The commonalties are also important. The significance of Indigenous fire stewardship has become widely accepted, while the effectiveness of prescribed burning has sometimes been questioned. Prescribed burning though, despite its association with western science, is founded on the same principles, real-world observations and evidence base that Indigenous cultures worldwide have learned from and relied upon. Fire can be used as an effective tool, fuels and wildfires can be managed, and a well-managed landscape is a healthy, productive and resilient habitat for humans and other species.
In northern Australia, for example, after decades of disruption to Indigenous burning, and destructive large scale late dry season wildfires, vast areas are now back under traditional stewardship. With land title changes and incentive schemes such as carbon credits, the north is being transformed. Across Australia, fire and emergency services and land management agencies are actively working with indigenous Australians to enable and support their aspirations in fire management, access to Country and cultural burning needs. Much progress is being made. As these relationships further mature, so too will the two-way learning accelerate and deepen. Even though the journey has just begun in some parts of the nation, Australia is on a new, positive and irreversible path to a future informed by the wisdom and experience of the past.
How do lessons learned from past burns influence planning going forward?
The AFAC National Burning Project was a valuable initiative that is still providing value. Workshops were held across the country to gather knowledge on best practice for strategic planning, program planning, operational planning and burn implementation. This initiative produced numerous publications, documenting evidence, knowledge, case studies and lessons learned from all regions of Australia. The final book in 2020 remains an authoritative text which not just drawn upon by AFAC members. Others including Indigenous organisations with carbon projects are applying the principles to demonstrate the rigour in their program management.
Each agency and jurisdiction has processes for post-incident reviews and the management of lessons learned. While primarily for bushfires and other incidents, these processes are applied to prescribed burns each year, although much more could be done. Through the AFAC Prescribed Burning Network, some agencies are sharing case studies which will assist with learning and improvement across the sector as well as efforts to communicate with the public about the professionalism and efficacy of burning.
The most valuable learning takes place in the bush. Competency based training programs are important, but experience in the field, especially under the guidance of highly experienced practitioners, remains essential for career development. The decline of forestry and other workforce changes have been accompanied by a loss of knowledge, which is becoming critical nationwide, affecting the delivery of burn programs and the more complex operations. AFAC has been working to address this and is seeking funding for a masterclass program that will take experienced practitioners and expose them to unfamiliar environments and operations in different jurisdictions, while being mentored by sector veterans. Program graduates with ongoing support as a community of practice will provide future leadership and expertise.
Are there innovations or new technology being used to improve the planning or delivery of prescribed burning?
Technology for prescribed burning has continued to change, from the Indigenous firestick to the drip torch to the aerial incendiary. The 1960s saw revolutionary advances in prescribed burning technology with the pioneering of aerial burning. Today, aerial ignition remains an essential tool to conduct prescribed burns and for other bushfire suppression strategies. Other major users include non-government conservation organisations, the pastoral industry, and Aboriginal corporations and Indigenous ranger groups across vast areas from Cape York to the Kimberley. Satellite remote sensing and end user applications such as the North Australia Fire Information website have supported planning and monitoring for these activities over the last couple of decades.
Drones are the emerging platform for delivering prescribed burns, allowing operations to be conducted in a safer and more targeted and timely manner. As for burn planning and monitoring, the use of artificial intelligence is likely to be the next revolution, if its power can be harnessed and integrated with fuel conditions, weather models, observations and decision support systems as well as human factors, workflows and organisational cultures. I recently attended a conference in Canada, and one of the exhibitors had developed a robotic and remotely controlled snake that could slither along a fire or burn edge at night, checking for hot spots, and applying water and additives up to a kilometre from the operator. There are more innovators than ever before, and the next revolution could be just over the horizon. While the gadgetry is important, fire management including prescribed burning remains primarily a people business and we must continue to invest in human capability.
2025 was a big year for fire across northern Australia. This graphic shows the full extent of the 10 biggest wildfire events across Australia in 2025.
While much of the attention is usually focused on wildfires in the more populated regions across southern Australia, the fires that burn the most area are further north. The largest was in the Tanami Desert, burning more than 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres), through central Northern Territory. Dozens of lightning strike ignitions coalesced into one enormous conflagration.
The next biggest was through a vast swath of country south of Broome in Western Australia at 1.2m ha (2.9m acres). The combined total, including eight other large fires burnt close to 10 million ha (24.7m acres) in 2025.
Rohan Fisher, Director Landscape Knowledge Visualisation Lab at Charles Darwin University, compiled the summary.
“It’s just a few fires at the wrong time that burn most country. Fire size distribution is fascinating and provides important lessons on how we think about fire behaviour and its management. I am hoping to publish a deeper analysis of this as it relates to our most fire-prone landscapes in the near future,” Fisher said.
UPDATE 4 April 2025 – here is the full report for the 2025 fire year across NAFI burnt area, which covers 80% of the Australian landmass. The 2025 fire year across the North Australia and Rangelands Fire Information (NAFI) mapping region was characterised by extensive fire activity, with a total of 656,125 km² burnt, making it the second largest fire year in the past decade, exceeded only by 2023.
Fisher’s data for this view is from the Northern Australia Fire Information (NAFI) web service, which has struggled to secure ongoing funding in recent years. NAFI was allocated partial funding in the 2026-27 Federal Budget but faces a funding shortfall for 2026-27.
NAFI wants $4.5 million over four years from 2026-27 but the 2026-27 funding allocated is around $300,000 under what it claims it needs to operate reliably.
NAFI covers 80 percent of Australia and is the only fire information service tailored to the bushfire management needs of rural and remote land managers across such a huge area.
Here is a NAFI video animation for the 2025 fire year in Australia. View and download mp4 videos of fire spread from NAFI maps for 31 regions across Australia. It is a great tool for communicating about northern Australia fire and for close analysis for fire behaviour fans.
A group of 74 Canadian Arduous Firefighters and Incident Management Teams from Alberta Wildfire and British Columbia Wildfire Service have just arrived in Victoria, Australia, to help fight ongoing bushfires across the state.
These crews are a part of 1300 interstate and international firefighters and IMT personnel brought in to support local crews in a week that has seen record breaking heat across southern Australia.
Victorian Emergency Management Commissioner Tim Wiebusch said there were multiple out-of-control bushfires burning across Victoria, including the Carlisle River fire in the Otways and the Walwa and Dargo fires in the state’s north-east.
Although the extreme temperatures had slightly eased in southern districts – along with some of the fire activity – the northern parts of the state and into New South Wales were still facing persistent heat. So far this bushfire season, more than 400,000 hectares of land has been affected.
The number of people on deployment has fluctuated over the days, but as of earlier this week 342 interstate support personnel were in Victoria in addition to the internationals:
38 from Western Australia
31 from Australian Capital Territory
127 from New South Wales
34 from Northern Territory
12 from Queensland
100 from South Australia
Wiebusch said the Canadians would stay for a month “bringing a very welcomed boost in capacity to allow us to rotate and rest local teams.”
“The Canadians will help manage and fight remote fires in the Wonnangatta and the Wabba Wilderness in regional Victoria. Amazing commitment to travel significant distance and be away from family and friends for this long period…We can’t thank you enough.”
The Canadian teams will join New Zealand crews already on these fires.
Canadian deployment to fires in Victoria, Australia, January 2026.
Alberta Wildfire has deployed 37 personnel, including 20 firefighters and 17 wildfire management specialists, to Australia for 30 days to support wildfire response efforts.
Alberta, British Columbia and Australia share a long-standing partnership in fighting wildfires, with 1410 firefighters and support staff deployed to Canada in the last three years.
This map shows the incredible, and in some cases unprecedented, temperatures in southern Australia on Tuesday 27 January.
Extreme temperatures across southern Australia, January 2026. Source: Bureau of Meteorology.
Parts of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia all exceeded 48°C /118F, which is rare for these states, even during severe summer heatwaves.
Significant, long standing temperature records were broken on Tuesday, highlighting just how far from ‘typical summer weather’ these temperatures were:
• Walpeup and Hopetoun both reached 48.9ºC yesterday, which was Victoria’s hottest temperature since observations began.
• New South Wales’s second hottest temperature on record was tied when Pooncarie reported 49.7ºC/121.7F.
• South Australia’s fourth hottest temperature on record was reached in Renmark, as it reached 49.6ºC/121.3F.
Thermal data acquired by the Copernicus EU Sentinel‑3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer highlight the severity of the ongoing heatwave across Australia, with extreme land surface temperatures (LST) detected over large regions.
In Willcania and Broken Hill, recorded land surface temperatures ranged between 58 and 60 °C (136-140F), whereas Adelaide appeared cooler, with temperatures of 45–48 °C, likely due to its proximity to the sea.
Australia’s record heatwave as seen from space, January 2026. Source: European Space Agency.
Credits: Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESA
Update, 13 January – The searing heatwave across southeastern Australia in early 2026 set the stage for an outbreak of bushfires in Victoria and New South Wales. The heatwave was one of the most intense on record as temperatures soared to 111°F (43.9°C) in Melbourne, Victoria and as high as 109°F (42.8°C) in Sydney, New South Wales. The hottest locations in Victoria included Wudinna, Tarcoola, and Walpeup, which recorded 48.2°C (118.7°F), 48.1°C (118.6°F), and 46.5°C (115.7°F), respectively.
After days of multiple fires at the highest level of Emergency Warning, today only 11 active fires remain, with all under the Watch and Act level or lower. More than 500 structures, including 180 homes, were impacted by the raging fires in Victoria alone as of January 12. One person, a cattle farmer, died in the Longwood fire.
The summer heat and long-term lack of rain has rendered vegetation dry and ready to ignite. By January 11, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image, many dozens of fires were burning across Victoria (south) and New South Wales (east).
January 11, 2026, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image, many dozens of fires were burning across Victoria (south) and New South Wales (east).This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, acquired on 9 January 2026, shows the area south of the town of Longwood in northern Victoria. Extensive dark burn scars mark areas already affected by fire, while active fire fronts appear in bright red tones.
The main highway connecting Sydney and Melbourne remains closed where several bushfires rage on the eve of brutal conditions forecast across Victoria for Friday 9 January.
Friday’s fire danger will be the worst across Victoria since Black Summer in 2019-20. Catastrophic and Extreme Fire conditions have been forecast across the state.
The Country Fire Authority’s Greg Murphy was direct in his summary of what the state was facing ahead after already experiences several days of intense heat and wind, with several houses already lost.
“Our job is to help people tomorrow. We might not be able to. That’s difficult to say, but it’s real.”
VicEmergency said that fire and weather conditions forecast on Friday will make bushfires burning in the north-central and northern part of the state extremely dangerous for people who live, work or are holidaying in these areas.
This time of the year is peak summer holiday season across southern Australia with beaches, national parks and forests crowded with holidayers from around Australia.
All national parks in the designated Catastrophic Fire Danger areas will be closed to visitors on Friday – this includes popular destinations in the Grampians, Otways, parts of the Murray and Goulburn Rivers, and many attractions on the Great Ocean Road. Events and holiday programs have been cancelled along with train and bus services in the most extreme regions.
The maximum of 42C (107F) on Wednesday is forecast to be repeated on Friday in Melbourne with high winds, with some regional areas as high as 46C (114F), stretching the limits of any bushfire suppression capabilities, with the high possibility of bands of thunderstorms and dry lighting crossing the state. New South Wales will get the same treatment into Saturday.
The death of two firefighters and the loss of around 40 homes have marked the effective start of the bushfire season across southern Australia and the active engagement of the national aerial firefighting fleet.
Milder conditions today have provided both New South Wales and Tasmania with some respite from extreme fire activity and the opportunity to strengthen containment lines before the heat returns.
Western Australia has had an early hectic start to the season with numerous warnings for fire, storm and heatwave across the vast state. The arrival of a C-130 this week to bolster its 38 aerial firefighting fleet has been welcomed.
The National Aerial Firefighting Centre has 161 aircraft filling 175 services across the country this summer.
Six LATs and 17 Large helicopters are on NAFC contracts this season. Their homebases are in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. While they are located and managed by the home jurisdictions, the NAFC contracts allow them to be shared across borders.
C-130 Hercules, part of the national aerial firefighting fleet 2025. Photo: NEMA
Australian Government funds of $100 million over 2024-25 support the NAFC fleet. Additionally, the grant funds the minimum costs of five national aircraft that are dispatched under the protocols facilitated by the National Resource Sharing Centre. This collaboration allows the Chiefs and Commissioners nationally to decide where these national aircraft can be placed so that they can be mobilised easily to the jurisdiction that has the greatest need. These five aircraft are on contract and in position now.
One National LAT is based in New South Wales, along with its Cessna Birddog aircraft
One National S61 multi use RW, also based in NSW
Two National Blackhawks are based in Qld and South Australia
Eight aircraft in the fleet have complementary contracts with North American agencies and follow the fire season to Australia every summer. Their Australian start dates are staggered across the country and all aircraft are in position in time for their contracted starts.
Further information about the NAFC fleet and its contracted operators can be found on the NAFC website Fleet.
The death in late November of a National Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia brigade strike team member working as a firefighter with the Country Fire Service while undertaking remote firefighting on the Eyre Peninsula and the death on the weekend of a New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service firefighter, plus the loss of more than 40 homes in both New South Wales and Tasmania have woken many to the start of the bushfire season across southern Australia. A farmer also died protecting his property in a fire in the south-west of Western Australia in early December.
The NSW NPWS acknowledged the loss in a public statement share on social media:
“It is with immense sadness that we confirm the death of a National Parks and Wildlife Service firefighter while working at a fireground south of Bulahdelah on Sunday night.
Our thoughts are with the firefighter’s family, friends and colleagues, including those from NPWS and NSW Rural Fire Service who were working alongside him.”
In the past week, fires at Koolewong and Bulahdelah in New South Wales destroyed 20 homes and a natural disaster has been declared in several local government areas, while wind-driven fires at Dolphin Sands along the picturesque east coast of Tasmania razed 19 houses and damaged dozens more.
While in November the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed a La Nina to welcome in the summer, it came with the qualification that the wet and cool weather may be brief. The heat well and truly arrived in December and, coupled with the fuel growth and long-term rainfall deficiencies in many regions, the bushfire summer began with several days of heat and wind.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanse has warned Australians of a “difficult” season ahead, with New South Wales in particular danger. He told ABC television:
“This summer, of course, like all summers that would appear in recent times, is going to be a difficult one. But New South Wales in particular has a range of preconditions, if you like, for being quite a difficult one.”
A body of research is challenging long-held beliefs that lessening fuel load inherently lowers fire risk.
Studies published by researchers from the Australian National University and Curtin University since 2022 have claimed long-held research that underpinned the Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions’ burning regime is incorrect.
A new study, just published by the researcher Philip Zylstra, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University, and David Lindenmayer, a Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University, delved further into this dichotomy and examined whether a full phase-out of prescribed burning would decrease severe bushfires and help forests return to their original, pre-frequent disturbance states.
The researchers said their study shows long-unburnt forests limit fire without human intervention, even as the climate changes. They found that 77% of all areas burned in over 500,000 hectares (1,235,527 acres) of forested national parks in southwest AU were due to prescribed burns, with 20% burned from escaped prescribed burns and 23% from backburning.
“If large-scale prescribed burning and incentives to backburn ended, the area burned annually would immediately fall 87%, leaving only fires started by lightning, accident or arson,” the researchers wrote this month in an article for The Conservation. “Our modelling suggests less area would be burned in the hotter, drier climate of 2100 than it is today if both widespread burning policies were ended.”
“Humans have a deep-seated desire to intervene in nature. But our research shows long-unburnt forests act to limit fire without human intervention – even as the climate changes.”
The researchers instead called on authorities to invest in rapid fire detection and attack, better resourcing firefighters, training and employing more specialist remote area firefighters and exploring fire-fighting drones.
They stressed that these latest findings relate only to the forests of south-west Western Australia. However, they quote their own 2023 research to claim that other Australian forests, and Northern Hemisphere forests, may also become more flammable through burning.
A spokesperson from the Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions said that any claims that forest flammability declines with age rest on inadequate data and following them would be unwise.
“[DBCA] research confirms that prescribed burning is effective in reducing the frequency, severity and size of bushfires in south west forests when at least 45 per cent of the landscape has a fuel age of less than six years since last burnt,” the Department statement sent to The Conversation said. “Removing fire from fire-prone ecosystems often leads to high-severity fires, as seen in a range of significant bushfires that have occurred in Australia and overseas.”
The same researchers faced similar pushback from the department after they published their March 2022 study. The researchers say that scientists from the department told them that their own records contained flawed data and suggested ignoring all records for old forests. The researchers said their findings only became stronger after they removed the reportedly flawed data.
In a week that has delivered wild thunderstorms along the northern coastlines of eastern Australia, a cyclone across the Top End, and the first Catastrophic fire warning for the southern Australia bushfire season, the latest bushfire outlook for Australia brings a mixed bag of fire and weather warnings.
The AFAC Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for Summer 2025 released today identifies an increased risk of fire for south-west Victoria, western and southern Western Australia and parts of central northern New South Wales.
It comes despite the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) declaring a La Niña event officially active in the Pacific for the first time since 2023, which often brings wetter conditions across much of Australia.
But the BoM is predicting this La Niña to be relatively weak, and maybe short-lived, allowing plenty of summer to be primed for fire. The Indian Ocean Dipole is negative but expected to return to neutral in December.
Long term rainfall deficiencies persist over the high-risk areas, combined with abundant surface fuels, raising the fire risk for the hotter months.
The Bureau of Meteorology reports that for much of Australia, the forecast for December to February rainfall is weak, meaning there is roughly an equal chance of above or below average rainfall. Chances of above average rainfall have generally decreased, with a dry signal now more pronounced for December.
The sea surface temperatures around much of the Australian coastline are above average, providing more moisture and energy for severe storms and weather systems. December to February is likely to experience above average daytime temperatures for most of Australia, with overnight temperatures expected to be warmer almost nationwide.
Things have heated up quickly in New South Wales this past week with dangerous fire conditions across central and northern parts of the state where grasslands have the potential to support intense, fast-moving fires. Dozens of schools closed on Wednesday as hot, dry weather brought on a catastrophic fire danger rating.
A joint research paper from researchers in California and New South Wales examined the similarities and differences between prescribed fire management in the United States and Australia, and found that Australia is much more efficient in the practice compared to the U.S.
The conclusion stemmed from Australia’s comparatively quick burn implementation process, the paper published in the Fire Ecology journal said. While setting up a prescribed burn on federal lands can take years in the U.S., Australian officials can often plan and set a burn in the same year with specialist feedback.
“The idea that you could plan and implement a burn in the same year, including incorporating specialist feedback and comply with various laws/statutes aimed at environmental protection, is rare in US federal and state agencies,” the paper said. “Australia has streamlined the process to facilitate implementation. Additionally, the responsibility to manage public lands in Australia is primarily the responsibility of states and territories, with the few exceptions of a small number of parks and other lands utilized by the Australian Government agencies and the Department of Defence.”
The U.S., however, has numerous sources of institutional education that Australia lacks, according to the researchers. The U.S. has numerous prescribed fire courses, training centers, and a collection of fuel moisture history, many of which land managers in Australia have learned from and implemented in their nation’s burn programs. Australia, in contrast, mainly relies on a dwindling volunteer workforce supplemented by land managers without dedicated courses that teach ignition patterns or techniques.
“Practitioners across Australia implementing complex burns could benefit from the US learnings, prescribed fire training centers, and firing boss taskbooks which include ignition patterns and techniques,” the paper said. “Prescribed burns are implemented with good success in Australia; however, there can be a lack of efficiency (not maximizing the burn window) or higher severity burns can occur when ignition patterns are not adjusted for the conditions.”
The paper, “Australia and the United States have many similarities and differences in prescribed fire management: learning from each other” is by Brian Levine, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Scott Stephens, University of California.
Wildfire Today reached out to paper co-author Stephens for further comment on the research. He deferred to the published paper.
The outcome of this collision of science and art provides a refreshing way of communicating complex scientific ideas with easily understood graphics and narrative, to a range of audiences including local communities or schools.
Lecturer Scarlet Sykes Hesterman led the project. “I saw this as a great opportunity for my third-year students to take on a creative and meaningful challenge; adapting complex scientific concepts into visual storytelling,” she said.
“I have a strong interest in ecology and the environmental sciences, so Hamish’s proposal was both exciting and fascinating. We quickly discovered a shared passion for the intersection of science and art, and for exploring how these fields can communicate information and ideas through new approaches.
“The resulting short videos can be viewed as stand-alone works or presented together as a mini-series. We found that the students responded enthusiastically to the brief and its themes. For many, it was their first experience working with a real client, and they were intrigued by the real-world implications of Hamish’s research.”
