Australia is a fire-prone country. First Nations people have used fire to care for Country since time immemorial. Many of our natural resources and ecosystems are fire-adapted, requiring the presence of fire to renew and regenerate. Colonial dispossession has disrupted fire regimes, placing both fire-adapted and fire-resistant systems at risk. Recent and projected climate change is leading to a further increased risk of catastrophic bushfires, and a growing need to bushfire preparedness and recovery efforts to become core business.
Bushfires impact natural resources in many ways. They directly impact threatened species, important habitat areas, biodiverse ecosystems, and natural and cultural heritage. They impact productive lands, crops and livestock, and can significantly damage soils, waterways and protective fencing. Post-fire landscapes often attract predators and are significantly more exposed to the damage done by encroaching weeds and herbivores like pigs, deer, camels and rabbits.
Regional NRM organisations have a vital role to play in bushfire recovery, and are often centrally involved, in planning, prioritising, mobilising, coordinating and delivering recovery efforts for natural resources, and in some jurisdictions also through formal roles in emergency management. NRM recovery activities range widely depending on needs: from mapping fire impacts, restoring and protecting remaining habitat and advising on management of fire-affected areas, to managing feral pests and weeds, restoring fencing, and erosion mitigation works that protect natural assets, soils and waterways.
NRM organisations work closely with state and territory government recovery efforts, often help coordinate and resource volunteer and community group actions, and frequently partner with First Nations organisations. As regionally-embedded organisations—at a time when many other local agencies and organisations are necessarily focused on human life and wellbeing, and the protection and restoration of built infrastructure—NRM recovery efforts thus play an essential role in the bushfire recovery ecosystem.
