Koalas and bushfire workshops
Training rural landholders to build bushfire resilience and preserve koalas.
Training rural landholders to build bushfire resilience and preserve koalas.This project aims to deliver training to landholders who live in identified rural and rural residential communities that are at risk of bushfire hazards.
Healthy Land & Water’s Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium (QFBC) is delivering the Community Bushfire Planning Workshops together with the Fitzroy Basin Association.
The purpose of this training is to increase community bushfire resilience, management, awareness, and capacity with a particular focus on koala conservation.
The project includes Community Fire Information Nights and a day Property Fire Management Planning workshop.
The project focuses on:
- Increasing stakeholder and community knowledge of best practice bushfire mitigation.
- Giving them a better understanding of what practical measures can be taken to enhance bushfire resilience.
- Reduction in future disaster risk.
- Koala conservation.
What we did
Reducing future disaster risk.
This project delivered through Community Fire Information Nights and a one-day Property Fire Management Planning workshop, involved:
- Increasing bushfire management awareness and capacity in rural residential areas that are vulnerable to bushfire risk within the Fitzroy Basin region of Queensland.
- Providing landholders with relevant information on prevention and preparedness.
- Facilitating their understanding of the impacts of these measures on the “whole of landscape” bushfire mitigation.
- Assisting landholders in their understanding of the role of fire in supporting biodiversity conservation - with a focus on koalas - and maintaining healthy ecosystems at a local, catchment, and landscape scale.
Measuring success
As a result of the program, the following has been achieved:
- Delivery of Community Fire Information Nights to introduce community members to a range of general bushfire topics and provide engagement opportunities for communities to meet and greet local government, QFES, and associated local rural fire brigades and traditional owners.
- Delivery of a one-day Property Fire Management Planning workshop to assist landholders or managers to reduce the threat of bushfires/wildfires to life and assets on their property, whilst protecting and enhancing the diversity and abundance of native plants and animals.
- Increased stakeholder and community knowledge of best practice bushfire mitigation through improved land management.
- Enabled land use management decision-makers within communities to better understand what practical measures can be taken to enhance bushfire resilience.
- Reduced future disaster risk and increased resilience of targeted communities and beyond to the bushfire hazard.
Why this project is important
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Bushfires are an inherent part of the Queensland landscape and in many areas, bushfire risk is increasing because of hotter, drier weather conditions. The devastating bushfires across much of Queensland during the Black Summer bushfires are an example of what we can expect in the future and demonstrate the potential for severe to catastrophic fire weather. These Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium workshops provide landholders with relevant information on prevention and preparedness and facilitate their understanding of the impacts of these measures on the “whole of landscape” bushfire mitigation. Moreover, the workshops assist landholders in their understanding of the role of fire in supporting biodiversity conservation - with a focus on koalas - and maintaining healthy ecosystems at a local, catchment, and landscape scale. |
Project snapshot
| Project name: | Community Bushfire Planning Workshop - Koala - Fitzroy Basin |
| Project manager: | Jamie Kruusmaa, Healthy Land & Water |
| Region: | Fitzroy Basin |
| Timing: | 2022 (Completed) |
| Partnerships: | This project is supported by Healthy Land & Water, Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium (QFBC) and the Fitzroy Basin Association. |
| Related Articles: |
What's next
There is huge potential to build on the successful work.
Project collaborators
This project is supported by Healthy Land & Water, Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium (QFBC), and the Fitzroy Basin Association.
