Shortly after the Grampians Gariwerd fires are extinguished, Suzan Muir describes the impact of a hazard reduction burn, which has had a catastrophic impact on her land and the animals and plants that lived there and in the adjoining Gariwerd National Park. The fuel-reduction burn that impacted their home was lit to protect adjoining farmland and buildings.

“The idea is to reduce the intensity of subsequent fires at the same place by removing fine surface fuels such as leaf litter. Reducing these hazards increases the window of opportunity for fire fighters to control bushfires….”. University of Tasmania

“This underpins fuel-reduction targets. In Victoria, for instance, the 5 per cent fuel-reduction target means a given area of bush will be burnt every 20 years. But ecologists are concerned that such high frequencies can have damaging effects on plant and animal species that require longer fire-free intervals to complete their life cycles’. University of Tasmania

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