Fire & Burning Regimes - Birds Australia

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Fire & Burning Regimes

Fires are a natural and integral part of the Australian landscape. For many thousands of years, bushfires have determined the extent and types of different habitats, and therefore the distribution of different species of birds as well. However, since European settlement, the pattern of burning has changed. Bushfires are now more frequent and usually more extensive than before. This change in burning regimes has resulted in various conservation issues which directly affect our birdlife.

Apart from killing birds directly, the main effect of bushfires is to modify the habitats in which birds live. In many areas, the first plants to regrow after a bushfire are environmental weeds, which may choke out the seedlings of other plants and eventually form monocultures. The weeds may dominate to such an extent that there is little or no diversity- in terms of types of plants and the structure of the vegetation - and most species of birds usually require diversity in their habitats. For example, populations of the Crimson Finch are probably in decline, at least in part because of the effects of fires. In the Dry Season, much of northern Australia is burnt extensively, and this has allowed the exotic Gamba Grass to proliferate at the expense of native grasses. As a result, the natural sequence of seeding of native grasses is altered, adversely affecting the Crimson Finches which rely on seeds for their food, and usually eat different types of seeds at different times of the year. Natural fires burn in a mosaic pattern, and this allows patches of grass of different ages and types to survive.

Some birds have very strict requirements when it comes to the habitats they live in. For example, Australia has three different species of bristlebirds which inhabit dense, fire-prone scrubland. After an area is burnt, it will not be recolonized by bristlebirds until the vegetation has regrown to a point where it offers sufficient cover. If bushfires are too frequent, the habitat is uninhabitable for bristlebirds as it offers too little cover, and the Western Australian subspecies of the Rufous Bristlebird became extinct after its habitat was burnt too often. However, if burning is too infrequent, the vegetation may become too dense for bristlebirds, and the Eastern Bristlebird, for example, requires a very specific burning regime for its wellbeing.

It seems obvious that managing bushfires is important for the conservation of many different species. Fire management in south-western Australia has allowed populations of the Noisy Scrub-bird, which was previously thought to have become extinct, to expand its population at Two Peoples Bay. For more information on the effects of fire on our native birds, see the Wingspan supplement Fire and Birds.