Green Adelaide Podcast
Your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia.
Do you want or have a career in South Australia’s environmental sector? Then this podcast is for you!
We are your enviro-exclusive on the people, projects and news of metropolitan SA.
The Green Adelaide Podcast is hosted by our Communication Manager, Melissa Martin.
On each episode she'll interview a local enviro-expert. From leaders and ecologists to planners and marketers to understand their career journey in and around the sector, as well as breakdown top environmental matters.
We’re not your regular environmental podcast, we’re your cool cultural podcast. How we live with our environment in Adelaide is a culture that we must talk about.
Subscribe via your favourite platform so you'll get new episode alerts. We’ll publish new episodes at the end of each month.
Green Adelaide Podcast
Ep 17: w/ Kirstin Abley | Fire ecology & management in South Australia + prescribed burns + geospatial skills + climate change adaptation + bushfire + conservation
On this episode we’ll be talking fire and prescribed burning in metro SA with ecologist Kirstin Abley.
Spring in Adelaide means that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is kicking off its annual spring prescribed burn program in prep for this summer’s fire danger season.
You’ll hear from Kirstin Abley who manages the Fire Science and Mapping Team at SA’s Department for Environment and Water. She is an ecologist with a background in threatened species, pest species management and fire ecology.
The term ‘prescribed burning’ means the controlled use of fire on a particular area of landscape, and we’ll chat with Kirstin about its use in metro SA and its benefits from environmental to community safety.
The Green Adelaide Podcast is your insider scoop on all things cool, green, and wild in metro South Australia. It is hosted by Green Adelaide's Communication Manager, Melissa Martin.
Subscribe to the Green Adelaide Podcast for new episode alerts!
It's, the more you learn about fire and the science behind it. It's fascinating, and I know I think a lot of people think that we just throw a match in the bush and hope for the best, but actually there's a huge amount of science behind how fire behaves, and the more I learned about that, the more fascinated I became, and so that really got me hooked. And there's so much fire. Ecology is also quite a new science and so, again, there's so much to learn.
Speaker 2:Hello, you are listening to the Green Adelaide podcast. This podcast is your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia. I'm your host, melissa Martin, and on this episode today we will be talking fire. Spring in Adelaide means that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is kicking off its annual spring prescribed burn program in preparation for this summer's fire danger season. Prescribed burning is the controlled use of fire on a particular area of landscape. Up to 45 prescribed burns will happen this year across south australia in the lead up to summer. I am chatting with kirsten abley, who manages the fire science and mapping team at sa's department for environment and water. Kirsten leads a team that uses the best available science, geospatial skills and knowledge to deliver prescribed burning. Plus, they use this knowledge to support SA's CFS. Kirsten is an ecologist with a background in threatened species, pest species management and fire ecology. She has a passion for the protection of the natural environment and understanding how to best use prescribed burning to support the recovery of threatened species. Welcome to the podcast, kirsten.
Speaker 1:Thank you, great to be here.
Speaker 2:Before we dive into prescribed burning, let's get to know you and how you ended up in your role today. Tell us about your career journey. Where did you start?
Speaker 1:Right. Well, I was one of those kids that loves animals and all the adults around me told me well, clearly I was going to be a vet, because that's what you do when you love animals. And the one thing they didn't know is that I'm incredibly squeamish. So I knew there was no way I was going to be a vet. So I enrolled in a Bachelor of Science at Melbourne Uni and when I was looking through the courses and saw all of the courses in zoology, conservation, biology and animal behaviour, I thought, wow, this is where I'm meant to be.
Speaker 1:And despite the careers advisor telling me that I had absolutely no career prospects if I took the selection of subjects that I chose, I went with that anyway and absolutely loved it, fell in love with all aspects of wildlife management and animal behaviour, learning a bit more about our environment, and from there I started lots of voluntary work while I was at uni and then continued that after uni and eventually landed a job, first with a consultancy, which wasn't my favourite job in the world. I didn't last there long and then went on to get a job with Victoria's Research, one of their research institutes, and that was amazing. They're working on threatened species and pest species management, and after my time there I moved over to South Australia to join the Southern Brown Bandicoot Recovery Program and work on that, and that ultimately led me into fire ecology.
Speaker 2:So you are from Victoria.
Speaker 1:I actually grew up in New. Zealand.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so I started?
Speaker 1:I actually I did do my first year of vet science in New Zealand and then my family moved over to Melbourne and so I transferred and it was at that time that, yeah, I took the big new step into zoology and, yeah, it was incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what type of volunteering did you do?
Speaker 1:I went out while I was in my third year. I went out actually helping monitor the helmeted honey eater and that was amazing although I discovered I have a terrible sense of direction and I kept getting lost but that was great. I did that one day a fortnight and then there were also during university. There were lots of programs to go out and help PhD students and research associates with their work, and so I'd go out and help with that, and I also went back to New Zealand and did a bunch of survey work there, which was so much fun, and that's actually one of the things that led me to my first job, because often in this industry it's about who you know as much as about what you know, and I made some fantastic connections there with people that helped me get my job in Melbourne.
Speaker 2:In a consultancy as your first job. Talk a little bit more about that role as your first graduate kind of role.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that it was a very, very small consultancy, which is possibly one of the reasons I didn't love it, because I didn't have a team of people to work with and help guide me, and so it was lots of very short-term projects, typically around impact assessment work, so where there was going to be a development and you were going out and doing environmental assessments to work out if the particular development was going to have a significant impact, to work out if the particular development was going to have a significant impact. So, yeah, not something I was particularly passionate about, but also, I think a lot of it, was the circumstances of having this very, very small team and no network around me to support me, which I think is, you know, when you're starting out in your first job, it's really nice to have a great team around you to help mentor you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And sorry, where was it from the consultancy? How did you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had actually also worked on at the university for a little bit after that. So one of the academics there was doing lots of kangaroo survey work and there was another academic running some wildlife surveys as a bit of a consultancy. So I helped as a research assistant at the university and that was also fantastic grounding. And then it was after that and this more formal consultancy that I got my job at the Arthur Isler Institute in Victoria, which was, yeah, just a fabulous place to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sorry, what was the name of the place? The Arthur Isla Institute. So they do a huge amount of environmental research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah Cool. And how did you end up at the Department for Environment from there?
Speaker 1:So from there, because I was working on a project on eastern barred bandicoots in Victoria and it just happened that there was a position coming up on southern brown bandicoots in the Mount Lofty Ranges and so I applied for that and won that position and from there that job changed into a general threatened species role. So it was yeah, it was lucky I happened to be in the bandicoot working on bandicoots at the time that that position came up, but it was a really a fan has turned out to be a fantastic move for me and love calling South Australia home now yep, and how do you um, because I find a few of our um people in the environment sector that I speak with some really like the practical, holding, the animal side, others, or actually most probably, just like the practical side.
Speaker 2:How have you, I guess, what do you prefer? I guess the research. There are still some obviously like touching and engaging with the animals, but maybe less so than the more operational side. So how do you feel about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, and as my career has gone on and I've become, you know, now managing a team, I do very little actually in the hands-on side of things, and so that's a huge change for me. I love being out in the field. I've loved catching animals and measuring them, but my skills in that area certainly are diminishing now the more time I spend in the office and fieldwork is fantastic, but it also requires very early mornings sometimes and very late nights and often a lot of time on your own, and I think over time I realised that, as much as I love it, I really I do enjoy being part of a team, and sometimes I'm not my best first thing in the morning. So I think it's all about recognising where your skill set lies, and that takes a while to get to. Yeah, get to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how did you? I guess for some listeners might feel you worked more with animals, now you're more in fire ecology Like how did that happen?
Speaker 1:I know, and if you had told me I would work in fire, you know, when I was that kid who loved animals, I would never have believed you. And so, really, I was working on the bandicoot recovery program and started doing a monitoring program because there was a prescribed burn planned for an area of their habitat, and so we were going to use that burn to better understand how they respond to fire, how it affects the population over time. And it was during that monitoring that I realised what an incredible tool fire is and how, if used well, you can achieve some amazing outcomes in terms of helping manage and enhance habitats. If used badly, of course, you can also have some terrible impacts, and I'm a very outcome driven person, and sometimes, when you're working with threatened species, things happen very, very slowly. It's really hard to turn a species around and see their recovery, but sometimes with fire, if you use it well, you can see results very, very quickly.
Speaker 1:And I got really excited about the influence I could have if I was working in fire and could help to use fire really well to help manage our habitats for the benefit of our native flora and fauna. And also, I love science, and it's the more you learn about fire and the science behind it. It's fascinating, and I know I think a lot of people think that we just throw a match in the bush and hope for the best, but actually there's a huge amount of science behind how fire behaves, and the more I learned about that, the more fascinated I became, and so that really got me hooked. And there's so much fire ecology is also a very, quite a new science and so, again, there's so much to learn and that's been really exciting. So that's what started me on my fire ecology path.
Speaker 2:And how do you define success in the environmental sector? That's a very tricky question, especially saying you're outcome orientated and you know outcomes take quite a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they do, they do and I don't know that.
Speaker 1:I have thought much about that question in the past and I think what I've done historically is probably judged myself on other people's measures of success, which I've learned is not a great thing to do, and it's only, I guess, really recently that I've started recognizing what success means to me and what my strengths are, that I've really got a better handle on that and really, as I said, I love getting great outcomes and so anything that I'm doing where I can see that I'm actually having a positive influence on achieving those outcomes, and also, I think, some of my skill sets and bringing people together to help them get the best out of them and to achieve these outcomes. That's when I feel that I'm working successfully. You know there are a bunch of ecologists who have far better ecological skills than I have, but I think some of my role is having that ecological knowledge and being able to bring those people together and collaborate and learn collectively and work out what the next steps are and how we get the outcomes we need to get.
Speaker 2:What are some of those cues that you look for, that you see that something your positive impact is working. What are some of the cues that tell you that?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a great question. I think sometimes, really, when you develop great relationships with the people you're working with, it's the feedback you get from people and that's great. When you work with an amazing group of people and you get to the point where you can tell each other, hey, that was really useful. Thank you for stepping into that conversation and helping us get a better understanding. So, yeah, for a lot of that I've had the benefit of having a fantastic team around me and that's been really helpful. And often as well, you might be in a meeting and you can see it's going off on a different tangent and when you you know it takes a bit of bravery sometimes to say, hey, I think we're misunderstanding each other here and try and get it back on track. But then when you see that conversation go, you know, get back to where it needs to be and you can see eventually everyone's listening to each other and is on the same page, then yeah, that's always nice when that happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for maybe people studying at university. Now, what would be maybe a tip if you wanted to get into the more fire ecology, space and work in fire management in South Australia?
Speaker 1:Fire space. You know there's fantastic opportunities at that grassroots level, whether it's joining your local CFS brigade or coming on board as a project firefighter with the Department for Environment and Water, Because we take on heaps of project firefighters each season and there are a huge range of people, whether it's from recent graduates or people who have had careers and are trying something new, and it's a fantastic way to get lots of exposure to prescribed burning, lots of amazing training and that's a great way just to see if fire management is for you.
Speaker 2:Now we're going to jump into our rapid fire round, which means I'm going to ask you some super random 10 questions, just to take you out of our topic and just to help our listeners get to know you a little bit differently. Okay, all right, here we go. The first question if you could have one superpower, what would it be?
Speaker 1:Ooh, being invisible, so I could, yeah, sneaky. Yeah, that's right, it is sneaky, but I think that would be fun.
Speaker 2:How old were you when you got your first job?
Speaker 1:Hmm, I used to work in a hardware store and I think I was probably about 16. Yeah, I can't actually remember doing. I'm not sure if I did paper rounds and things before that, but I think yeah, about 16 was my first kind of proper after-school job.
Speaker 2:Would you travel to space?
Speaker 1:No, no, that terrifies me, I think. I'd like to see the view, but, no, I think the risk involved would, yes, drive up my anxiety levels higher than they need to be.
Speaker 2:What car would you drive if you could afford anything?
Speaker 1:I'm really not into cars, so anything that is uber efficient is fine with me. And blue Colour is important, right? So something blue.
Speaker 2:What is your favourite animal?
Speaker 1:Oh, that is a very hard question. I have so many favourites. Look, I think pygmy possums, pygmy possums have to be the craziest, cutest little things ever, and when you have the pleasure of holding one in your hand and it's all sleepy and its ears are all floppy, yeah, that's pretty mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:Where did you go on your last holiday?
Speaker 1:I have just got back from three months of long service leave. We travelled around Western Australia and the Northern Territory and it was absolutely divine Wow. With caravan, or how did you do it? Yeah, it was absolutely divine Wow.
Speaker 2:With caravan, or how did you do it? Yeah, with a camper.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, camper with my husband and two girls, yeah, that's a lot of close time together.
Speaker 2:It was a lot of close time we all survived. What is your favourite breakfast?
Speaker 1:My favourite breakfast is the breakfast I always have, which is muesli with fruit, although, having said that, on my birthday each year, my husband makes me birch and muesli, so just takes it up a notch and, yeah, that's pretty special.
Speaker 2:What time do you usually go to bed at night?
Speaker 1:Later than I should. I love to be in bed by half past 10.
Speaker 2:And can you name one of the seven dwarfs, dopey.
Speaker 1:I actually had. I used to work on potoroos and I had a potoroos named Dopey yeah, he was was. He was a funny little man. He was very yes, he became very attached to. He became very what we call trap happy, and so wherever I put the traps, regardless of whether it was within his home range or somewhere else, he would seek out the trap so that he could get a little peanut butter snack and, um, yeah, it was very funny seeing him each morning. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're like dopey again.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And last question Godfather or Star Wars?
Speaker 1:Star Wars, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that is the end of our rapid fire round I survived. Now on to the next part, which is the basics about fire management In your own words. Can you explain how fire is used to manage the landscape in metropolitan Adelaide or wider?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we use fire areas for two main reasons. One of them is to reduce fuels, which is native vegetation to help us manage the bushfire risks. And when I say reduce them, it's obviously a temporary thing. So you burn an area and that area, for a period of time, has reduced amount of fuels and hence when a bushfire comes through it it has much lower intensity and it is easier to undertake firefighting operations in that area. But the other objective we have is for the enhancement of and maintenance of biodiversity. So, whether that's specifically through ecological burning or as well, when you are undertaking prescribed burning for bushfire risk reduction, you can also achieve those ecological outcomes. So it's very much a two-pronged approach.
Speaker 2:You talked about how it reduces native vegetation for a little while. What are the? And it helps with the biodiversity of the area, but can you explain a little bit more detail into the benefits? And I guess, once you've done, well, once you've decided that you're going to do a burn in a certain area, what are the kind of things that you think about that it will benefit specifically?
Speaker 1:So I'll go back a few steps. I think most people in Australia get the idea that fire is a natural process and that fire has been around for thousands and thousands of years. Here, aboriginal people have obviously used fire really extensively, and there's also have always been lightning strikes that have started bushfires where we have very flammable vegetation, and so, as a result, our native vegetation and wildlife has become adapted to specific fire regimes and, as a result, it actually to maintain the diversity of species that we have within an area, those habitats that are fire prone and a huge proportion of them are particularly in South Australia you need a level of fire and different habitats require different amounts of fire. So there'll be some habitats that require it very infrequently and others that are more adapted to a relatively frequent fire regime, and I guess one of the issues that we've created with European colonisation is, I mean, a we've cleared lots of vegetation and using fire and then mechanical clearance, but also we've got very good at suppressing fire, because clearly we're you know it's something that if you don't understand fire well, it's clearly a force to be reckoned with, and so we've got very good at suppressing it to the point that some of those habitats that actually require it no longer have enough fire, and that's not something that we necessarily think about when we think fire is a natural process.
Speaker 1:We actually, you know, if you follow the bouncing ball, it means that actually we do need a level of fire in many of our habitats. Bouncing ball it means that actually we do need a level of fire in many of our habitats, and so we actually have huge areas of habitat now that actually don't have fire. And then, because we've kept it out and we can use prescribed burning now to help reintroduce fire in a controlled manner in these areas, both to achieve that bushfire risk reduction and also those ecological outcomes that are so important for our natural, our native flora and fauna.
Speaker 2:Because fire, I guess in Adelaide's current culture I feel like the idea of fire is quite fearful and if you see fire or see smoke, your automatic reaction is to be something bad's happening. Cfs is somewhere there managing it kind of thing. Do you think there'll be a time where people are a bit more accepting of fire occurring in the landscape without being this, I guess, icon of fear?
Speaker 1:I think we have a huge amount to learn from our First Nations peoples in this respect, because for them, clearly, fire is a tool and it's you know, it's vitally important to them, and we need to get to that place where we understand that we live in a fire-prone environment. That's not going to go away and with climate change, you know, we can expect really much more severe fire behaviour. And we need to learn to live with fire and we need to understand it and we need to understand the ecological role that it plays and build it into our culture so that really we manage it well and we're less fearful of it because we know how to manage it. And so, yeah, I think we've got a long way to go, but I really do hope that at some point we really learn to live with fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so how long has prescribed burning been like a normal practice for South Australia to look?
Speaker 1:after the land For National Parks and Wildlife Service. We've actually just celebrated 20 years of the fire program, so that's really exciting. But that doesn't mean, you know, there are lots of other people prescribed. Burning just doesn't sit in the realm of National Parks and Wildlife Service. There's private landholders, obviously, First Nations people. You know Forestry SA were burning long before the Environment Department. So but yeah, 20 years for the National Parks and Wildlife Service within DW, and yeah, and I think we've progressed hugely in that time.
Speaker 2:Yep, and what have you seen, or what have you noticed as the improvements that it's made for the landscape over the last 20 years when National Parks and Wildlife Service has been doing it?
Speaker 1:So there's certainly I think most people, as they're driving around, will see lots of areas now that have had a prescribed burn undertaken and are now regenerating from that, and it's really fascinating to walk through those areas and see the diversity of plants. And I would recommend people go for a walk in a prescribed burn area on the track in spring, a year or two after it has been burnt, and the wildflowers you'll see there are absolutely stunning. I often think we should take walks through prescribed burn areas as they're regenerating and people will see really how incredible the native vegetation we have is in terms of how it responds to fire and that you know it's so lush and green and so diverse and just looks so, yeah, so healthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is there a difference? Because I went through Kangaroo Island after the bushfire and it was like a week later and it was already regenerating and it was beautiful in its own right. Is there a difference between maybe that grow back compared to a prescribed burn grow back?
Speaker 1:Some of the bushfires we're getting now are of of extreme intensity and I guess that's one of the things we're we're wanting to avoid and um and so prescribed burns are occur at a much, much lower intensity and and you'll get uh, certainly you'll see, on kangaroo island there'll be some, some of the trees and things might actually die and there'll be some plants that would ordinarily just re-sprout. That might not in this case. So very, very intense bushfires may kill a range of things that otherwise would survive. Under prescribed burn conditions. And bushfires that are really, really intense and moving really fast, wildlife tends to not be able to escape them.
Speaker 1:Prescribed burns typically are quite slow-moving fires and you'll see wildlife moving ahead of the fire and escaping it. So there is a huge difference in the effects of a bushfire compared to a prescribed burn. But also there are bushfires that have great ecological outcomes as well. I guess what we're just trying to avoid is those really really high intensity fires and also where you're getting fires in very close succession. So I was driving through an area of Victoria in the high country there and they've had a couple of fires clearly quite intense fires and relatively close succession, and the plants that need to have a chance to grow and set seed and drop that seed before the next fire. Haven't had the chance to do that, and so that fire interval has changed, and when that happens then you're going to lose species. So those are the sorts of things that we're trying to avoid.
Speaker 2:I mentioned in the intro about the knowledge your team provides to SA's Country Fire Service. Yes, can you talk through a bit about what support your team provides to them?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'll start by saying that the staff here at DW many of us are actually DW has a brigade of the Country Fire Service. So when you see people out fighting fires particularly fires on Park, but also really big fires elsewhere in the state, our team so myself and others in my team and a huge number of people within DW are firefighters within a brigade of the CFS. So many of us have a role as a firefighter. But in my team we also have three functions that we help provide to the CFS. One of those is around the provision of mapping support during bushfire incidents and we provide that not just to the Country Fire Service but to other agencies for any emergency that requires a level of mapping support for emergency management. We also have a bunch of people who are trained fire behaviour analysts and they do the bushfire predictions and work really closely with CFS and provide them to the CFS to help CFS in terms of managing the incident.
Speaker 1:And the third team is a relatively new team and it's one I'm pretty excited about and it's called our Natural Values Team.
Speaker 1:And that team we're obviously aware that during a bushfire it's not just human lives and built assets that are at threat.
Speaker 1:Our flora and fauna can be impacted by bushfires as well, and that's not just from the fire itself, but sometimes the measures we put in place to try and suppress the fire can have impact.
Speaker 1:So sometimes we're putting a bulldozer line through or dropping retardant, and so what this Natural Values team does is, when there is a fire that's likely to impact natural values, is we provide advice to the CFS about particularly what threatened species are likely to be in the path of the fire and could either be impacted by the fire or by those suppression activities, and provide advice to the CFS about what measures could be implemented to either avoid those impacts or minimise them.
Speaker 1:To either avoid those impacts or minimise them and obviously the CFS has to take everything into account, and clearly the protection of human life is absolutely paramount but often it will just require a very small tweak to their tactics to avoid an impact on a threatened species. It might be that you just put a control line 100 metres further south, for example, and there might be a bunch of strategies that they're considering to suppress the fire, and if one of those also helps reduce any impacts on threatened species, then that kind of is some information that goes into their considerations, one of the areas where South Australia is really punching above its weight. There aren't many states that actually have natural values teams.
Speaker 2:Are the types of people that want to get into the more fire ecology type of environmental sector. Are they people that are secret pyros or why do you think they've been swayed like reflecting on your reasoning? Why do you think they've gone in that direction to really be interested in that area of fire? Good question.
Speaker 1:I think, look, I think most people working on flora and fauna management are interested in how to manage the range of processes, whether that's a threat or the implementation of a natural disturbance regime to help manage flora and fauna. So really I think fire is just one of those, so some people might get a particular interest in pest species management and go down that path.
Speaker 2:When you go to uni you do get a environmental science degree. Is it part of?
Speaker 1:that it certainly wasn't part of the degree when I went through university. Increasingly, there are fire science and fire ecology subjects, which is fantastic, because the more people that understand it, the better now we're going to go on to a bit more of the more science behind the fire.
Speaker 2:So let's chat about fire behaviour. And so when I say that there is three factors that influence fire behaviour, I'm just wondering if you can go through that and how they influence the behaviour of the fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you kind of go back to your school days, you know this is a good old fire triangle, which essentially says you need heat and you need oxygen and you need fuel for there to be a fire. And really fire science, when it comes down to it, is as simple as that. It's looking at how each of those influences how a fire behaves. But out in the world, each of those things varies hugely.
Speaker 1:Your fuel loads, which is your vegetation, varies depending on what habitat type you're in. It will vary depending on the aspect that the vegetation's growing on, in terms of how densely it will grow, growing on, in terms of how densely it will grow the heat of the day, so the weather conditions, will affect fire behaviour. So each of those things varies enormously. And that's where the fire science is really fascinating Understanding that fire burns up a slope, for example, far more quickly than it will burn on flat ground. And that's because as you're going up a slope, the flame is bending over and it's preheating the fuel ahead of it. So the fuel ahead of it has that extra heat and hence it ignites more rapidly in a fire and hence it ignites more rapidly in a fire. So for every 10 degrees that you increase in slope, you'll double the rate of fire spread.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so all of those things. So the speed with which a fire moves and the intensity that it burns all depends on all of the factors, whether it's, you know, heat, fuel and oxygen, and how much of those it's getting within the landscape.
Speaker 2:Yep. And so when you are doing all the planning for a prescribed burn, obviously some of these factors you can't control, and so can you talk us through a bit about the planning towards a prescribed burn and how that kind of fire behaviour comes into it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the things that you can't control is one of the reasons we undertake prescribed burning. Right, because during summer we can't control the weather, we can't control where there's going to be a lightning strike, and so the thing we can control is the fuel. And that's why prescribed burning is effective, because, essentially, if you have areas with lower fuel, then those are going to burn at a lower intensity and your ability to put the fire out increases if the intensity is lower. In fact, there's a point where, when the intensity is so great, there is nothing that firefighters are going to be able to do to put that out. There's nothing that you know, when the fire is burning really intensely, that aircraft are going to do. So having areas where a fire, a bushfire, is going to burn through a low fuel area less intensely does provide us with that suppression advantage essentially.
Speaker 1:So when we're undertaking prescribed burns, you're right, there's a huge amount of planning that goes into a prescribed burn.
Speaker 1:So we look really carefully at what the fuel loads are across the site.
Speaker 1:We have what we call prescriptions for given vegetation types that tell us what sort of weather conditions that we're going to burn under and what sort of how dry the fuel needs to be.
Speaker 1:And then we take into account all sorts of things like the topography of the site because, as I've mentioned, fire is going to burn at different rates up a slope and down a slope and on flat land.
Speaker 1:So all of those factors come into play and on top of that, the way in which you actually put fire into the landscape of that, the way in which you actually put fire into the landscape, so where you light it and how much fire you put in, will control the behaviour of the fire. So it's really quite complicated and we find it a bit frustrating when people seem to think that we just kind of go out there and go, oh, it's a great day for burning and we're just going to go to a park and flick a match out the window. Because the amount of planning that goes into running a prescribed burn is immense, and the amount of training that has gone in before that so people understand the science behind it all and can apply that so that the fire behaves in a manner that we are able to easily control it is immense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. A lot of effort goes in to plan the burn and then you need to determine the day, and the day can always change because of the uncontrollable yeah and the amount of planning.
Speaker 1:There are burns that you're prepared for and all of the resources are worked out. You know who's got the right training, which appliances are you going to put them on, pairing the right people up together, making sure you've got the right equipment and everything ready, and then the forecast changes.
Speaker 2:So can you go into maybe a specific example, maybe the Cleland Conservation Park example, and just maybe talk us through for that specific park what planning was done to do a prescribed burn there, with both that had the reducing bushfire risk and threatened species benefits kind of outcomes to them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, reducing bushfire risk and threatened species benefits kind of outcomes to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is an example of a burn we've done that has dual objectives. The burn was in an area of Cleland where there was very high bushfire risk to surrounding assets and to important roads that were thoroughfares and the area hadn't been burnt since Ash Wednesday so it was very, very long unburnt. So we were looking at undertaking a burn to reduce the fuel loads in this area. But one of the other factors in consideration is there was a swamp within this area. Factors in consideration is there was a swamp within this area and that swamp we knew contained a species of orchid and that was their sole population in the state and lots of monitoring had been done on this particular orchid and there were only 12 plants left in the single population in the state and it had been monitored and monitored, monitored and its numbers were declining and we thought that the reason it was declining was possibly because it was one of these species that needs some disturbance and it hadn't been burnt since 1983. And that was when the population was actually rediscovered in the area after the Ash Wednesday bushfires. But what happens with species like this is that you have the succession over time, where you have, in this case, coral ferns, slowly, so that the orchids do really well when the vegetation is quite open and they're getting a lot of sunlight and lots of nutrients, and then, over time, species like in this case, coral fern gradually crowds them out, and there are a range of species that don't do so well as they're crowded out by other, often more common species, and that's fine. They can persist for a long time waiting for the next fire, unless that interval between the next fires is really too long and they haven't had a chance to set seed or get the energy back to their tuber so that those bulbs continue to persist, back to their tuber, so that those bulbs continue to persist. So we thought, well, doing this burn, we should try and burn part of this population to see if we can. Actually, this is, you know, our hypothesis is right and this is a species that does need some fire. But clearly when you've only got 12 plants left, that's pretty nerve-wracking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we did decide to only burn half of the population.
Speaker 1:But again, burning, excluding an area of really high fuel load right in the middle of a burn, is not the easiest thing to do, and so it required a huge amount of work from the team to put in brush cut lines around this particular patch so that half of the orchids would of work from the team to put in brush cut lines around this particular patch so that half of the orchids would be excluded from the burn and the other half would be burnt and yep, the burn went ahead really well and very pleased to report that the monitoring undertaken after the fire.
Speaker 1:So two years later we had 83 orchids in that burn area and still about the same number in the unburnt area. So it really showed that that species is one that really does benefit from that periodic disturbance that fire provides and again over time the coral fern will creep back in and the numbers will diminish again. It just it does need that periodic fire. So a great example of of how we can um undertake prescribed burning and achieve those, those dual bushfire risk reduction and ecological outcomes yep, so there's times in metro sa when the media is reporting this smoke.
Speaker 2:There's smoke or people might see it outside from their window, from work or home. How do our listeners find out if that smoke is a prescribed burn or actual bushfire?
Speaker 1:The easiest way to do that is to go onto your favourite search engine and just type in prescribed burning, South Australia, and there will be. You'll see pages come up there for DW's fire management area and there there's actually a map that will show you if it's a prescribed burn. It will show you where the prescribed burns are happening through the state. It'll tell you which ones are active and which ones are just planned, so you'll be able to see that way. Also, one of the pages that will come up will be the CFS's website that has incidents on it and that will also show where there are fires in the state that want to be notified ahead of time. On the fire management page web page for DW, there's actually a point where you can click and subscribe and then you'll get notifications in your inbox of when there are prescribed burns in your area. So that's really, really useful. And the other thing is the Alert SA app is a great one to register for so that you know what's happening in your local area, Yep.
Speaker 1:And I'll add that link in our show notes for our listeners to suss that out, and I guess the one extra thing I just did want to add there is that one of the things we often get is when we're undertaking a prescribed burn and people will know it's a prescribed burn but they'll see a helicopter and social media goes crazy with oh, they've lost the burn, there's helicopters. And what people don't realise is actually we light a lot of our burns using aircraft. Yeah, so burns that are, whether it's that, particularly big or particularly steep, so it's not safe to have our firefighters out lighting them. So in those conditions there, we'll light them using the helicopters.
Speaker 2:And how do they put out a prescribed burn?
Speaker 1:Do you know what? The burns that are really well planned. So you light them in such a way that really they self-extinguish because the burn comes out to the edge and so it's all in the lighting pattern. So a really really well planned burn. You actually don't actually need to do much to put it out because you've lit it in such a way that essentially it self-extinguishes. We certainly mop up the edges, so once it has burnt out to the edge, then we have appliances and people on the ends of hoses putting out.
Speaker 1:So we tend to what we call mop up 30 metres into the bush and just to make sure that everything is out there, because you don't want a log or something that's still burning on the inside continuing to burn because you might have a few days later you might have some bad weather, and it actually reignites and throws an ember into unburnt bush adjacent. So we do a lot of mopping up after the burn. An ember into unburnt bush adjacent. So we do a lot of mopping up after the burn. That's not very exciting. And then we actually have. You know, people also don't realise that we actually have crews patrolling burns through the night after a burn and then for multiple days afterwards, just to make sure that everything is fully extinguished and there's no risk.
Speaker 2:And to wrap up for the last question for our listeners who are new to the environmental sector what's one learning from your environmental career so far that you wish you knew when you started?
Speaker 1:Work out your strengths and work to them. Don't try and do what everyone else is doing and feel that pressure that you need to, yeah, be the same as everyone else. Everyone has different interests and passions and strengths, and I think it's really important for you to actually focus on those and know what you want to do and really put your heart and soul into them, because ultimately, you know, that's where you're going to get your fulfillment and that's where your greatest contribution is going to come from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Thank you so much for your time today Absolute pleasure. That brings us to an end of this episode of the Green Adelaide podcast. Thank you to our special guest, Kirsten Ably. And talking about prescribed burning and the science behind fire. Maybe you've learned a little bit more about fire and maybe it's a little bit less scary. This podcast was recorded on Kaurna land and I'd like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the Kaurna people as the traditional custodians of the land. The Green Adelaide podcast is your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia. I am your host, Melissa Martin. Subscribe to our podcast for new episode alerts. Bye.