The Fire Crisis in Western Australia

Broadscale prescribed burning is unsustainable in a warming, drying climtate.

The WA Government’s fire management strategy is to maintain a fuel age of LESS THAN six years since last burnt in AT LEAST 45% of the landscape across the three south-west forest regions.

This equates to burning approximately 200,000 hectares of the southwest landscape on an annual basis.

These burns are meant to make us safer. Instead, they are destroying biodiversity, driving wildlife toward extinction, polluting our air, and having minimal effect on reducing fire risk, particularly in extreme fire weather.

Broadscale prescribed burning is unsustainable in a warming, drying climate

Why This is a Crisis

WA’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) uses fire extensively throughout southwest WA to burn vast areas of forests, woodlands and other biodiverse ecosystems each year through an area target system.

But independent reviews reveal

Biodiversity is under threat.
Threatened species like numbats and Western ringtail possums are being killed in prescribed burns and their habitats destroyed (Leeuwin Group, 2019).
Communities are suffering.
Smoke has caused more premature deaths than wildfires in the southwest (Johnston et al., 2020).
Safety isn’t guaranteed.
Major escaped prescribed fires like Margaret River 2011 swept through treated areas despite years of burning (IGEM, 2015).

A Timeline of Prescribed Burning in WA

Mid-1800's

Traditional Aboriginal burning practices in WA were suppressed by colonial laws and practices starting as early as the mid-19th century.

WA Bushfire Regulations were passed in 1847 which limited Aboriginal cultural burning practices and punished Aboriginal people for lighting fires, including public flogging: “An Ordinance to diminish the Dangers resulting from Bush Fires.”

Source: https://www.legislation.wa.gov.au/legislation/statutes.nsf/main_mrtitle_10973_homepage.html

Early 1900's

Some settlers born 1901-1930 adopted and adapted Aboriginal burning methods:

Season: autumn after first rains
Frequency: mostly 3-4 yrs (2/3-8/10)
Size: mostly 10-50 acres (0.4-20 hectares)
Patchiness: high

Source: Abbott, 2003.

1950's

Broad area prescribed burning of southwest WA forests became formal policy in the mid-1950s.

1970's - 1990's

The target to burn 200,000 hectares was developed in the late 1970's and early 1980's by the WA Forests Department and formally adopted by a Ministerial Review Panel in 1994.

It was notionally set by the average number of prescribed burning opportunities that could be expected to present themselves, the resources available to undertake them and an estimation of how much of the landscape needed to be maintained in a low fuel condition to reduce the risk of landscape scale bushfires.

This target equates to approximately 45% of the southwest landscape to have less than six year old fire ages.

20191208_Mt Lindesay NP-8000+ ha prescribed burn

2000 onwards

Present day

Research shows no reliable link between total area burned and wildfire extent (Campbell et al., 2022).

Quarram prescribed burn May 18 and 19, 2024

What Indigenous Fire Knowledge Teaches Us

For millennia, Noongar Traditional Custodians cared for Country and used fire for spiritual and cultural purposes and to effectively manage the land. Their approach was the opposite of today’s burns driven by area targets:

Cultural burning is about healing land, not hitting quotas. Today’s broadscale, industrial burns disregard this wisdom — and the land suffers for it.

Reform must mean listening to Indigenous voices; respecting and supporting cultural fire knowledge, values and practices.

What’s Being Lost

Biodiversity impacts

Fire regimes that cause declines in biodiversity have been nationally recognised as a key threatening process.
Prescribed burns in Warrungup Spring Reserve in Mandurah and Perup east of Manjimup destroyed threatened populations of 'critically endangered' ringtail possums and 'vulernable' numbats.
Black cockatoos and other hollow-dependent fauna lose nesting hollows when old growth trees collapse after burns.
Frequent fire keeps forests permanently young and dense, making them more flammable.

Health impacts

Between 2002–2017, prescribed burn smoke caused 21 premature deaths, compared to 4 from wildfires in the same period (Johnston et al., 2020).
Annual smoke haze costs WA an estimated $24 million in hospital visits and lost productivity (Johnston et al., 2020).
Children, the elderly, asthmatics and those with pre-existing illnesses are especially vulnerable.

Myths About Prescribed Burning

Myth

Burning more hectares = more safety.

Fact

Studies show no clear link between hectares burned and reduced wildfire losses (Campbell et al., 2022). Extreme weather drives outcomes.

Myth

Prescribed burns are harmless “cool fires.”

Fact

Even low-intensity burns kill wildlife, including threatened species and destroy critical habitat (Leeuwin Group, 2019). Many prescribed burns are not cool at all.

Myth

There are no alternatives.

Fact

Victoria abandoned its 5% annual burn target in 2015 after reviews found it ineffective, replacing it with a risk-based system (Safer Together) (IGEM, 2015). NSW has always used Bush Fire Risk Management Plans, focusing burns near communities instead of meeting quotas (NSW RFS, 2020).

The Climate Cost of Burning

Prescribed burns are a hidden driver of WA’s emissions.

They contribute around 10% of WA’s annual greenhouse gases. These emissions exacerbate climate change and are not fully accounted for in state reports.

Frequent fires release more carbon than regrowing forests can reabsorb.

They undermine WA’s commitments to reduce emissions in line with global targets.

WA Climate & Fire Weather

All of Western Australia has warmed since national records began in 1910. Average temperature has increased by 1.3 °C since 1910, leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events.
Western Australia has a rapidly warming and drying climate, with 20% less winter rainfall in southwest WA since 1970, accelerating to 26% since 1999.
The decline in southwest WA has been larger than anywhere else in Australia.
Many parts of the southwest have had the lowest rainfall deciles recorded for 125 years, since 1900 from July 2023 to June 2025.
As a consequence, extensive areas of native vegetation, wetlands and waterways have suffered severe drought and heatwave impacts.
There has been a long-term increase in extreme fire weather and in the length of the fire season across large parts of Australia since the 1950s.
WA is expected to have longer fire seasons, with around 40% more very high fire danger days.

Sources

While the world moves to net zero carbon, WA’s fire policy is burning its climate budget.

Community Voices

We are seeing an ecological crisis unfolding in our forests — not from wildfires, but from planned burns

Dr. [Name]Ecologist

Our old people taught us: some forests must never burn. That knowledge has been ignored for too long.

Noongar Elder

The smoke is worse than the fires. Every autumn my asthma gets worse, and I dread burn season.

ResidentWalpole

If Nothing Changes

If WA continues blanket broad-scale burning every year

Species like the numbat and western ringtail possum could face local extinction within a decade (Leeuwin Group, 2019).

Old growth forests will continue to collapse and deteriorate and be replaced by dense, highly flammable regrowth

Communities will face an ongoing smoke-related health crises.

This isn’t a distant risk. It is happening now — and accelerating.

Why Change is Urgent

Other regions show us reform works

Victoria

Abandoned its hectare target in 2015, adopting a risk-based approach (Safer Together) that targets burns in area where they matter most (IGEM, 2015).

NSW

Uses Bush Fire Risk Management Plans that prioritise community safety, not annual quotas (NSW RFS, 2020).

Internationally

California and Portugal emphasise rapid detection, early suppression, and cultural fire.

WA is now one of the only regions clinging to hectare targets — an outdated and damaging policy.