Weaving Palawa knowledge with Western science

Fire, in its essence, is about connecting people with place, past with future, ground to air. The 8th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference began today in Hobart, Tasmania with a Welcome to Country from Trawlwoolway man Todd Sculthorpe, who asked everyone to think about knowledge that respects and understands fire. Here is his Welcome to the 470 delegates.

Ya pulingina, hello and welcome.

My name is Todd Sculthorpe. I stand before you as a proud Trawlwoolway man, carrying a lineage that stretches back through my ancestors to Fanny Cochrane-Smith, and her parents Tanganutra and Nicerminic and their parents and so on. Their lives, their resilience, and their deep relationship with Country live on in me, and it is with that good spirit and with deep respect that I welcome you all here today to Nipaluna, Hobart.

This land was traditionally the lands of the Muwinina people, they cared for this country nestled between the feet of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington and the shores of Timtumili Minanya/the River Derwent. From as far down the southeastern coast to the Kingborough region and as far north as the Derwent valley they cared for country, introduced vital life-giving burning that has shaped this landscape. As a community we feel their absence deeply because with them went generations of cultural knowledge and a deep relationship with country. But they will not be forgotten by us the Palawa community and because of that they will continue to live on in our hearts and our intentions to respect and care for country.

I pay respects to my community the Palawa people, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, as the enduring custodians of this land Lutruwita. I pay my respects to our Elders past and present and to those that did not survive the impacts of invasion. I extend that respect to any first nations people here today, to your elders and families and all delegates and presenters.

You have come here as fire practitioners, scientists, land managers, thinkers, and knowledge holders from across the world. You have come to talk about fire, its behaviour, its fuels, its risks, its science. But here, on this island, fire is more than a phenomenon to be studied. It is a relationship. It is a language. It is a practice of care.

For Palawa people, fire has always been part of how we understand and live with Country. It is not something separate from us, it is something we move with, something we listen to, something we carry responsibility for.

When we speak about cultural burning, we are not simply speaking about a technique or a management strategy. We are speaking about a way of seeing the world, where fire is guided by knowledge passed down over tens of thousands of years. Knowledge built through observation, through story, through practice, and through deep, enduring connection.

Fire, in this sense, is not destructive. It is regenerative. It is purposeful. It is relational.

It clears, but it also reveals.

It burns, but it also heals.

It transforms, but it also connects.

And importantly, it is never applied in isolation, it is always part of a broader understanding of Country: the seasons, the winds, the animals, the plants, and the people.

In Lutruwita, our ancestors used fire carefully and intentionally. They read the landscape in ways that science is still catching up to, understanding when to burn, where to burn, and when to let Country rest. These practices shaped ecosystems over tens of thousands of years, creating mosaics of vegetation that greatly reduced the risk and intensity of wildfires and supported biodiversity.

Today, many of the landscapes you study, many of the fuel loads you model, are the result of disrupted relationships with fire. When cultural burning was interrupted, when people were removed from Country, fire did not disappear. It changed. It built up. It became something more dangerous, more unpredictable. And we have seen the impact of this not just here in Lutruwita and not just in Australia but globally.

And that brings me to where we find ourselves now.

We are living in a time where fire is increasingly framed as a global crisis. We see it in the headlines, megafires, unprecedented seasons, landscapes burning with an intensity and scale that challenges our systems and our understanding.

But perhaps what we are really seeing is not just a fire problem, but a relationship problem.

A disconnection.

A forgetting.

A loss of balance between people, fire, and Country.

If I can offer a metaphor, think of the world right now as a landscape carrying a heavy fuel load. Not just physical fuels, but social, political, and environmental tensions. Climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality, conflict, all of these are like dry tinder accumulating over time.

And when the right, or perhaps we should say the wrong, conditions come together, those tensions can ignite. Sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly. Sometimes in ways we expect, and often in ways we don’t.

We are living in a time of unpredictable ignition.

And just like wildfire, once something starts, it can spread rapidly, crossing boundaries, overwhelming systems, and challenging our ability to respond.

But we know, from fire, that unpredictability does not mean uncontrollability.

It means we need deeper understanding.

It means we need better relationships.

It means we need to pay attention to the conditions we are creating.

And that is why conferences like this matter.

Because just as fire moves across landscapes, knowledge must move across communities.

You have come together here, from different countries, disciplines, and perspectives, to share what you know. To respectfully challenge each other. To learn. To innovate.

And in that coming together, there is great strength.

But I would encourage you to think about this not just as an exchange of information, but as an opportunity to build relationships, relationships with each other, and relationships with the places you work.

Because knowledge without relationship can only take us so far.

Todd Sculthorpe, Aboriginal Trawlwoolway man from Tasmania, welcoming delegates to the 2026 International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference.

Cultural burning teaches us that the most important question is not just “How do we burn?” but “Why do we burn?” and “Who are we in relation to this place?”

It asks us to slow down.

To observe.

To listen.

To be guided, not just by data, but by responsibility.

And it reminds us that fire is not just a tool, it is a teacher.

Here in Lutruwita, we are in a time of renewal. There is a growing recognition of the importance of cultural burning practices, and a re-emergence of Aboriginal leadership in caring for Country. But this work is not about going backwards, it is about bringing together knowledge systems.

To offer another cultural analogy,

It is about weaving.

Weaving together Palawa knowledge and Western science.

Weaving together long-term observation and modern technology.

Weaving together community, policy, and practice.

And like any weaving, it requires care, patience, and respect.

Because not all threads are the same.

Not all knowledge is held in the same way.

And not all voices have been equally heard.

So as you move through this conference, I invite you to think about what you are contributing to that weave.

What knowledge are you bringing?

What knowledge are you open to receiving?

And how are you ensuring that the relationships you build here are grounded in respect and reciprocity?

Because the challenges we face, whether they are wildfires, climate change, or broader global uncertainties, cannot be addressed by any one group alone.

They require collective effort.

They require humility.

They require us to recognise that no single system of knowledge holds all the answers.

Fire, in its essence, is about connection.

It connects the ground to the air.

It connects the past to the future.

It connects people to place.

And in many ways, this conference is a fire in itself, a coming together of energy (physical and intellectual) and potential.

So, my question or my challenge if you will indulge me is, what will you do with that energy?

Will it burn quickly and fade?

Or will it be tended carefully, like a cultural burn, creating space for new growth, strengthening connections, and leaving the landscape healthier than before?

That choice sits with all of us.

Before I close, I want to return to where I began, with my ancestors.

Fanny Cochrane, Tanganutra, Nicerminic.

They lived through times of immense change, upheaval, and loss. They witnessed the disruption of Country and culture in ways that are difficult to fully comprehend. And yet, through them, knowledge endured.

Connection endured.

Responsibility endured.

I stand here because of that endurance.

And I speak to you today with that same sense of responsibility, to ensure that what we pass on to future generations is not a landscape of crisis, but a landscape of care and of respect.

A landscape where fire is understood, respected, and used wisely.

A landscape where knowledge is shared, not siloed.

A landscape where people come together, not just in times of emergency, but in ongoing relationship.

So in that spirit of care and respect, I welcome you to Nipaluna.

I welcome you to Lutruwita.

I welcome you to this gathering.

May your time here be meaningful.

May your conversations be respectful.

May your learning be deep.

And may the knowledge you carry forward help create a better, more balanced relationship with fire and with the world we all share.

Nayri nina-tu (thank you).

AI predicts wildfire risk faster than current warning systems, new study finds

A wildfire forecasting system powered by artificial intelligence was around 30% better at identifying dangerous fire conditions in advance than the models currently used, according to new research.

The Australian and New Zealand researchers’ study, published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, trained a machine learning model on historical weather and fire data from three different fire-climate regimes across Australia, specifically the subtropical Sunshine Coast, peri-urban Brisbane and temperate Hobart areas. They then tested it against Australia’s current wildfire risk system, the fuel-specific Fire Behaviour Index.

The machine-learning model outperformed the current forecasting model by 10% to 30%, depending on the scenario, the researchers found. The AI-based model also doubled potential financial savings compared with the Fire Behaviour Index.

An immediate limitation was the frequency with which the current model updated wildfire data compared to the new machine learning model. Current systems could only compute wildfire forecasts hourly and release a risk rating to the public only once a day. But the machine-learning system could update its information every 30 minutes, providing near-real-time insight.

“Wildfires don’t wait for the daily forecast. If fire weather conditions can change within hours, our warning systems need to move just as quickly,” lead author Alberto Ardid said in a Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury press release. We originally developed the model as a proof of concept in one region. However, in this new study, we tested it across multiple regions to see whether the approach works under different fire weather conditions.”

Click here to read the full research.

North America: Hot, dry winter may bring a burning spring

A smoke plume at sunset on the 8 Ball Fire near Clarendon, Texas. Photo by Texas A&M Forest Service Texas.

As we come into the north-flowing warmth of the North American spring, the impacts of snow drought and heat dome are prepping wildland fuels for what may be a transition to a “super” El Nino.

Yet it is spring, and reading the North American Seasonal Fire Assessment and Outlook for April through June we note that there is something assuring in the calm, expert insights from nearly a dozen analysts from Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (Mexico), the National Interagency Fire Center (United States) and Natural Resources Canada.

This is not to downplay a winter with extraordinary fire activity — for the U.S., the latest national Situation Report counts 22,000 fires year-to-date (150 percent of the 10-year average) and nearly 1.8 million acres burned (190 percent of average).

Moving into the spring, the Seasonal Fire Assessment identifies numerous regions likely to see above-normal fire activity (and some will be very active), but overall there are broad regions enjoying what may be a truncated spring green-up with the potential to transition too quickly into what many fear will be a quite literal (and potentially tragic) barn-burner of a summer. 

In the Seasonal Fire Assessment, released April 15, the authors observe that what North America faces is both global and as local as the dry dirt under our feet: “The critical factors influencing significant fire potential for this outlook period are global climate patterns related to sea surface temperatures, particularly in the Pacific Ocean, and large scale, longer-term soil moisture deficit.”

It’s the soil moisture deficit that’s a challenge to overcome … with the current Drought Outlook for mid-April highlighting the drought in the US West (with growing dry holes in the central Rockies) and in much of the Southeast. 

A 12-week drought animation, closing out on April 14, illustrates the expanding deficit, with at least 70% of the U.S. in drought since the beginning of February.

This drought impact has already been noted in a Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisory for the Southeastern United States, issued April 16 for the southern Appalachians, Piedmont and coastal Southeast — basically, a swath from New Orleans to Cincinnati, Ohio to Washington, D.C., to Florida.

The Southern Area analysts caution that “normal” fire conditions may not moderate the extraordinary dry fuels …

Typical fire weather thresholds may not apply when record high fire danger and record heat align – critical conditions may occur with RH 5% above and winds 5 mph below regional thresholds

Do not be fooled by fuels that appear to be green – fire will spread readily under current conditions

Back to the North American Seasonal Fire Assessment, we note that the above normal activity for the southeast U.S. is also appearing in Mexico’s active fire season. 

As summarized by the analysts: “Considering current temperature and precipitation patterns, national drought status, and seasonal forecasts, wildfire activity is expected to escalate across most of Mexico during April and May.” 

While they note that spring is “projected to be comparatively less warm due to slightly above average rainfall, which will enhance soil moisture and effectively modulate fire intensity.” With the potential for warmer and moister conditions, they also note the impacts of variability: “the transitioning to ENSO-neutral in May keeps the potential for extreme dry or wet events … a highly unstable and wetter than normal spring is expected compared to previous years, though significant heat will still characterize the season.” Moving into June, fire activity will move north into northern Baja and moderate in the south.

Moving north, the U.S. is likely to parallel the seasonal north-ward green-up, with notable exceptions: 

In June, above normal potential will continue in much of the Southwest, while also expected into much of southern Nevada, southern Utah, and the Colorado West Slope. Above normal potential will also expand across much of northern California and the Inland Northwest. In the Southeast, above normal potential is forecast to persist for South Georgia and Florida, while also expected for portions of East Texas and Louisiana.

The western U.S., is expecting a summer-long impact from the dire lack of snow water equivalent (SWE). The combination of a record snow drought followed by record heat dome has left key watershed regions at 9 to 53 percent SWE of normal.

Canada, however, is likely to benefit from a winter snowpack more robust than the U.S., with fire activity increasing in June — though the analysts note “minimal skill” in some of the outlooks, due to the movement from La Niña and into ENSO-neutral conditions.

For June, much of the country [Canada] shows at least a moderate probability of positive temperature anomalies, but these are particularly evident throughout British Columbia and Labrador as well as areas surrounding Hudson’s Bay. Precipitation outlooks offer no clear signal and minimal skill. That, combined with likely ENSO-neutral conditions supports higher fire potential in June throughout British Columbia and areas surrounding James Bay, west of Hudson’s Bay, and extending into the eastern Northwest Territories. Near-normal activity is expected in the rest of Canada in June.

After June, the impact of ocean-warming may lead us into a “super” El Niño, with the El Niño outlook moving from moderate to strong to very strong over the next few months.

Beginning in June, there is 79 percent likelihood of some stage of El Niño ocean warming. By August, the probability rises to 90 percent, with 63 percent likelihood of Moderate to Very Strong conditions. For much of the U.S, outlooks suggest warmer than normal temperatures and variable precipitation effects. An analysis from Severe Weather Europe expands the impacts and predicts “global weather disruption” for 2026 into 2027.

For now, the North American seasonal fire assessment maps offer a view of our immediate fire future, April through June. Of note: in the three months of continent-wide fire assessments, only two relatively small regions in Canada indicate below-normal fire activity.

Is the US Forest Service’s reorganization a ‘dismantling’ or a needed shift? Experts weigh in on wildland fire’s impact

The United States Department of Agriculture’s recent announcement to make sweeping structural changes to the nation’s Forest Service has brought confusion and uncertainty countrywide, ahead of what’s expected to be a very active wildfire year.

Numerous former Forest Service staff and communities have since shared their views on the announcement across multiple platforms, with some claiming the move is an effort to put more power into the hands of states, and others saying it’s an attempt to “dismantle” the entire agency. The reaction triggered the USFS to create a section of its webpage addressing “myths and facts” about the reorganization.

Kelly Martin, a decades-long fire veteran in the Forest Service and National Park Service, was initially sympathetic to the USDA’s alleged goal of moving more federal resources and support to the state level. Officials plan to transition the Forest Service to a state-based model in the western half of the nation, while maintaining the Service’s historical regional approach in the East. Leadership’s stated reason behind the move was to strengthen local partnerships and simplify the chain of command.

Martin, who is also a former president of the International Association of Wildland Fire, said states have long played a critical role in allocating scarce forestry resources for fire preparedness and response, and, on its face, this reorganization would ease that burden.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Forest Service to undergo ‘sweeping restructuring,’ close all regional offices

“In an ideal world, the states and federal agencies would all be working with and talking to each other, but no one is compelling us to have to work together,” Martin said. “This idea of pushing decision-making down to a collaborative process between the state and federal government, to me, makes sense.”

For that state-federal collaboration to actually work in practice, however, Martin said Forest Service directors would need to be required to work with state-based land management agencies to align the highest-priority projects. Officials have so far made no mention of such a requirement as part of the reorganization. Martin also said that while resources for preparedness and response have surged over the past few years, projects focused on land management and hazardous fuel reduction, which are critical to preventing future catastrophic wildfires, haven’t had nearly the same momentum, and nothing mentioned in the reorganization so far has addressed that disparity.

Research into wildland fire is also at risk of being severely impacted by the reorganization. Officials will close 57 of the Service’s 77 research stations across the country and consolidate them into a centralized office in Colorado. Numerous stations are located in university laboratories or at experimental forests where researchers analyze environmental changes over long periods of time, including wildfire risks and impact.

That move appears at odds with the current administration’s stated goal to focus on state needs, since a hyperlocal understanding of an environment’s relationship to fire is critical for understanding wildfire risk and prevention, according to former Forest Service researcher and current Tall Timbers Director of Fire Research Morgan Varner.

“Anytime we retreat from places where there’s a lot of wildfire or a lot of prescribed fire, which this plan does, you’re compromising our ability to conduct really relevant research,” Varner said. “That boots-on-the-ground has always been a unique aspect of Forest Service R&D … Local researchers are members of those communities, they know the managers in that area, they understand the challenges of people there, and how wildfires affect the economy, the loss of that relationship is the real cost of this.”

Fire and Aviation Management Deputy Chief Sarah Fisher claimed multiple times that the Forest Service reorganization would have no impact on current wildland firefighting resources, specifying that the current Geographic Area Coordination Center (GACC) structure and reporting coordination with the National Interagency Fire Center would continue.

The loss of research that supports fire prevention and response appears to contradict Fisher’s claim.

“When USDA moved key offices to Kansas City during the first Trump administration, that 80% of their staff either retired, resigned or changed jobs,” Varner said. “That’s the hidden cost of the lab closures … When you try to move people around, many of them are just not going to go.”

Martin acknowledged the risk of public lands being sold off but also said seeing such speculative risks is easy in any major reorganization. What’s harder is to steer the reorganization in a way that benefits forests and addresses long-held issues in the agency. The current unknowns make forming any conclusions near impossible, she said.

“It’d be a real tragedy and a real shame if a ‘dismantling’ came to be,” Martin said. “There’s a lot of trust that still needs to be rebuilt … and I think there are innovative and novel ways to address the problems that face our forests today.”

Big-tech companies pool their strengths for wildfire innovations

Four industry heavyweights will combine resources in a $100 million push for advance early detection and coordinated response to wildfires.

Lockheed Martin, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Salesforce and Wells Fargo have formed a joint venture in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and other technologies “to detect, prevent and fight wildfires”.

The announcement of the new venture – Emberpoint – is short on specifics on how the $100 million will be spent or how and where the outputs will be used, but says “agencies and utilities will gain access to proven, state-of-the-art systems without the burden of development costs, enabling communities to benefit from advanced, affordable wildfire prevention.”

This venture is one of many similar initiatives currently active around the world, and it not entirely clear how much is being done in cooperation and how much in competition.

Lockheed Martin and PG&E, for example, are already supporters of the XPRIZE Wildfire, which last week announced its five finalist teams in the Autonomous Wildfire Response Track, an $11 million global competition for teams developing innovative wildfire technology.

The venture has a strong US focus, but given the corporate reach of the four partners, the potential benefits could flow beyond those borders into other wildfire regions.

“It’s time to change the way we think about wildfires and bring the best of American technology and know-how to this growing threat to lives and property. Devastating wildfires are on the rise and this new partnership brings four leading companies in the aerospace, electrical power, tech, and financial industries together to address this national problem,” said Lockheed Martin Chairman, President and CEO Jim Taiclet.

 “Building on Lockheed Martin’s leading-edge capabilities in space and ground-based sensing systems, autonomous air and land drones, and command and control systems, EMBERPOINT™ aims to combine these skills along with those of our partners to address what is a true national security mission.”

Taiclet was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying Emberpoint had $100 million committed to the venture from partners.

Other partners were more definitive in the scope.

 “This partnership underscores our commitment to ending catastrophic wildfires,” said PG&E Corporation CEO, Patti Poppe.

“We plan to seek regulatory approval to pair Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s on-the-ground experience with our partners’ advanced technology, and properly scale how we identify risk, prevent incidents, and protect the people and ecosystems we serve for the benefit of all society—while staying fully focused on providing safe and reliable energy to our customers. Today’s announcement marks the next step in a broader, multi-phase effort to end catastrophic wildfires.”

Lockheed Martin is a global defense technology company with a significant involvement in wildfire work, particularly with its Sikorsky aerial firefighting aircraft (BlackHawk, FireHawk) and its ongoing development of an autonomous helicopter as part of the Rain.aero venture. It is headquartered in Maryland but claims 350 facilities across the US and worldwide.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation based in Oakland, California, has 16 million customers in north and central California. It will bring “deep wildfire mitigation experience, with proven layers of protection and a track record of deploying effective risk management programs across geographically-diverse communities.”

San Francisco based software company Salesforce will contribute its skills in “integrating disparate data streams into a unified, real-time response engine” using the power of its messaging app Slack and its AI building platform Agentforce.

Wells Fargo, the US-based multinational financial services company, is helping to fund the venture through a capital investment.

FEMA wildfire official facing questions after claims of receiving priority payout for New Mexico wildfire

A senior FEMA official is facing questions after media published the claim he received wildfire relief payments from the fund he was administering for victims of a 2022 New Mexico fire.

According to the report in Source NM and NMPBS, Jay Mitchell is in charge of FEMA’s multi-billion-dollar fund to compensate victims of New Mexico’s 2022 Hermits Peak Fire, which remains New Mexico’s most destructive wildfire with 430 homes impacted in communities northwest of Las Vegas. The report claims he received a six-figure payout over the past year for damages the fire caused, despite the properties in question being over an hour’s drive from where the fire actually burned.

Documents produced by Source NM appear to show Mitchell was paid $266,000 for smoke and ash cleaning costs for his house and guest home in Angel Fire, New Mexico, a ski resort town over 40 miles north of where the fire burned. The same documents show that Mitchell’s wife, reportedly a licensed real estate broker selling property in Angel Fire, got more payments totaling over $250,000 for business-related losses she allegedly incurred during the fire.

Other homeowners in Mitchell’s neighborhood told Source NM that smoke from the Hermits Peak Fire did not cause any discoloration or damage to their homes or to those of anyone they knew.

The payouts to Mitchell were made as 74 people or families who lost their homes in the wildfire are still awaiting compensation nearly four years after the fire burned, according to recent estimates from the claims office reported by Source NM. Michell was placed in charge of the compensation fund approved by Congress after it was determined that the wildfire was caused by two botched prescribed burns overseen by the U.S. Forest Service.

Multiple New Mexico lawmakers have since called on Michell to resign after Source NM’s reporting was released, including senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, along with representatives Teresa Leger Fernández and Martin Zamora.

Two years ago, another FEMA director resigned amid criticism of the government’s mishandling of relief payments to victims of the same New Mexico wildfire.

Click here to read the full article.

‘Covering Wildfire’ toolkit released for journalists and other media professionals

Cold Fire

A group of Canadian researchers, wildfire practitioners, Indigenous Firekeepers, and journalists has created a free, comprehensive resource to strengthen wildfire reporting.

Simon Fraser University made the “Covering Wildfire” toolkit as part of its Mitigating Wildfire Initiative, which was created to prevent catastrophic wildfires by transforming how Canada works with fire, according to the initiative’s website. The initiative specifically seeks to change the overwhelming flow of funding from suppression toward prevention.

The toolkit focuses on seven specific pathways for how journalists and media outlets can change their coverage of wildfires to reflect the realities and challenges that the natural phenomenon poses, including covering wildfire as a year-round story, highlighting resilient solutions, and improving collaboration between the media and wildfire agencies.

“The toolkit is a collective, co-created offering from the 50 folks who gathered at the bootcamp for other journalists across the nation, aiming to support them in telling this critically important story,” university officials said on the institution’s website.

Mitigating Wildfire Initiative Director Yolanda Clatworthy first unveiled the toolkit in June at a workshop in Calgary, where she told Wildfire Today it had been well-received. Both fire professionals and journalists shared how helpful it would be for their workflows, as well as for increasing trust and responsiveness within their communities. The toolkit was also presented at an interactive session at the IAWF international Wildfire Summit in Calgary in October 2025, and it has begun to help agencies and journalists outside of Canada as well.

“Folks in San Francisco at Red Sky Summit were also asking about it and saying how helpful it would be in an American context as well — a testament to the expanded reach and how much co-created outputs are needed,” Clatworthy told Wildfire Today.

Click here to download and read the full toolkit.

Canadians, Kiwis bolster Australian fire efforts

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 

More shooting on public lands will lead to more wildfires: study

The leading cause of wildfire ignitions on public lands in recent decades has been lightning, but new research shows humans may become the predominant cause of wildfires thanks to a recently enacted law allowing more recreational shooting.

Research published by Boise State University and the United States Department of Agriculture delved into fire reports for the Bureau of Land Management’s National Conservation Lands from 1992 to 2020 and found that 73% of fire ignitions were natural-caused, while human ignitions were only 27%. That is nearly the opposite of national trends, where human-caused ignitions account for 84% of all ignitions.

But one National Conservation Area, Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey in Idaho, was the opposite. This conservation area had 68% of its wildfire ignitions caused by humans. This public land also made up 25% of all ignitions on all of the Bureau’s National Conservation Lands between 1992 and 2020.

Total count of human (excluding military-related) and natural ignitions documented in each NCL unit between 1992 and 2020.
Total count of human (excluding military-related) and natural ignitions documented in each NCL unit between 1992 and 2020. MONE is the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey (MONE) National Conservation Area in Idaho, US.

The difference between Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey and other Bureau lands is that Morley Nelson has a year-round live-fire shooting area managed by the Idaho Army National Guard, meaning shooting directly contributes to the prevalence of fires on the public land.

All other public lands may soon go from having minimal human-caused ignitions to Morley Nelson’s numbers because of a recently enacted law. The Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act, signed into law in January 2025, requires the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to establish at least one shooting range in their respective districts, expand motorized access, and increase campground usage.

Boise State University Environment Researcher Meg Dolman told Wildfire Today that she believes the act would increase the risk of human-caused wildfires due to the increased recreational shooting, human presence, and general activity on public lands. But she said the increased risk could be offset through preventative measures.

“Our research emphasizes that further efforts are needed to reduce wildfire risk from recreational shooting, through improving educational messaging, or encouraging recreational shooters to carry fire suppression tools and be prepared to extinguish any fires that may result from their activities,” Dolman said. “Our paper also highlights the need for safe fire-proof bullets for use in firearms and shooting ranges, especially in arid, fire-prone areas like the sagebrush steppe. Ultimately, our research encourages public land agencies to address human-caused ignitions more proactively and as a matter of urgency, especially those caused by recreational shooting.”

Click here to read the full paper.

A guide to the basics on future fire and climate

View from the Warner Lookout Tower looking at the north section of the Emigrant Fire, September 2, 2025. Photo from Willamette National Forest, InciWeb.

Science is showing how climate change is increasing catastrophic wildfires around the world, but a new study claims we still lack the basic information to make more precise conclusions about fire and its future impacts.

Warming, on its own, may not increase the overall fire risk as heat is only one of the many influences on fire. And as impressive as the climate models may be, the real work is still to be done on using the model outputs to make real-life decisions that affect our daily lives.

We know a lot about fire. And we know a lot about climate. But there is so much more to the puzzle. A group of scientists from around the globe have collaborated on a paper that is a guide for piecing the puzzle together – from the published papers and the modelling, to creating tangible, useful projections on future wildfires.

The trend in the number of journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire.
The trend in the number of journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire. Graphic: Francesca Di Giuseppe

Lead author Assoc Professor Hamish Clarke, from the University of Melbourne, says that a more realistic alternative to reading absolutely everything published on the subject is to read this new paper in Science Advances: “Gazing into the flames: A guide to assessing the impacts of climate change on landscape fire.”

“It may seem obvious that climate change is making bushfires worse, but the truth is more complicated,” he explains.

Clarke led the global team of researchers to develop a guide to looking at climate change impacts on wildfires and they conclude that it is no longer going to be sufficient to just look at what wildfire researchers are saying.

“It’s clear it will take more than just experts from one field to accurately project what’s to come. Some of the disciplines we point to may be obvious – atmospheric physics, botany, ecology – but it’s also about other areas like health and medical sciences, economics and paleo science.

“More than this, it’s the knowledge that lies outside academia too, like emergency response agencies, land management agencies, Indigenous knowledge, and communities with lived experience of fire.”

The paper attempts to pull the fragmented pieces of knowledge together.

“The solution isn’t just collecting more and more. We need specialists who can join dots, summarise, synthesise, curate, find and make meaning in iterative dialogue with others. We can’t leave this task to AI, although computers can certainly help.”

It is difficult to keep up with all the published articles on wildfires and climate change.

Top 20 countries with the most journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire.
Top 20 countries with the most journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire. Graphic: Francesca Di Giuseppe

Readers can save themselves the effort of reading every paper on fire and climate change and check out this paper. “We try to guide the reader through some of the main currents in the scientific literature, with a focus on what we need to do to develop better assessments of climate change impacts on fire.”

Assoc Prof Clarke’s paper was co-authored by Francesca Di Giuseppe from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast UK, Lynn Johnston from Natural Resources Canada, Jennifer Marlon from Yale University, Trent Penman from FLARE Wildfire Research at University of Melbourne, Andy Pittman from ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and Climate Change at University of New South Wales, Guido R van der Werf from Wageningen University Netherlands, and Mike Flannigan from Natural Resource Science Thompson Rivers University Canada.