Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555:body:0:p54
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555
Segment Type: other
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Character Range: 173703–176763

et al. 2000; Lunney et al. 2007). However, at the landscape level, there is a paucity of research on the impacts of fire regimes and the influence of the resulting shifting habitat mosaic on recolonisation (e.g. attributes of in-situ refugia) and population-level recovery for the Koala.

Prescribed burning
Prescribed burning to reduce fire risk could affect biodiversity adversely undertaken without an adequate understanding or consideration for species' responses to different fire regimes (Clarke 2008; Driscoll et al. 2010; Whelan 1995, 2002). Inappropriate burning practices can cause inadvertent and irreversible changes and may lead to the loss of local populations or extinction (Baker 2000).
Prescribed burning to reduce fire risk is widely used as a management tool to protect life, natural and built assets in Koala habitat across Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Multi-layered policies, strategies, planning procedures, tools and research guide fire management activities. Implementation varies markedly, depending on local vegetation type, land tenure, the organisation/s undertaking the fire management action and objectives.
Little data exist on the impact of prescribed burning on Koalas at the individual or population level; however, initial work in this area indicates that risks to Koalas is high regardless of fire suppression approaches. Modelling of fuel behaviour in dry sclerophyll forests of the Southern Tablelands, where low or moderate-intensity fires can cause significant canopy scorch (Cheney 1981), found that even low-intensity burns substantially increase the risk of injury and mortality to Koalas (Zylstra 2019). Fire behaviour simulation models of dense coastal forests near Bega, in south-eastern New South Wales, found that although substantial and expensive fuel reduction approaches to protect life and Koala habitat reduced bushfire size and probability, the residual risk remains high (Bentley and Penman 2017). While treatment of large areas can reduce the likelihood of a fire spreading, under severe fire weather conditions the amount of fuel becomes less important than weather as fire can still spread through areas with low fuel loads (Bradstock et al. 2010), as was evident in the 2019–2020 summer bushfires.
The alternative view, at least for south-eastern Australia, is that repeated low-intensity burning, similar to Indigenous cultural burning practices, can lead over time to healthy forests containing mature trees with relatively low nutritional status for Koala, yet are able to support stable, widespread, low-density populations (Jurskis 2017).
Since their arrival on the Australian land mass at least 65,000 years ago, Indigenous Australians have influenced fire regimes by purposeful use of landscape fire for a variety of reasons (Hisock 2008). This continues in parts of Australia. As Costello (2019, pg 23) notes 'Budabe belong to waybar jagun. Koalas belong to fire Country' and the Koala needs appropriate cultural and land management practices to flourish.