This presentation by Paul Gibson-Roy provides case studies from Greening Australia to explore the role of fire in maintaining or enhancing species rich grassy communities. Presentation from Nature Conservation Council of NSW 2015 Bushfire Conference - Fire and Restoration: working with fire for healthy lands.

1. Fire as a tool for
maintaining diversity and influencing
vegetation structure
The management
of GGRP sites

2. 1. Protection of life
2. Protection of assets
Biomass reduction
Weed control
Biodiversity attributes
Cultural connections
Why do we
burn?

3. Roadside burns in western Victoria maintain
strategic fire breaks for human and asset
protection

4. Burns also play an important role in preserving
remnant roadside communities

5. Ground layer Fire response in remnant vegetation

9. Why do we burn GGRP sites?
• Reduce biomass and inhibit grassy dominants
• Restrict undesired tree regrowth
• Rejuvenate vegetation (grasses and forbs)
• Allow for persistence of sub-dominants (forbs)
• Maintain canopy gaps for recruitment
• Cost (?)
• Ease (?)
• Effectiveness (?)
• Competing objectives (?)

10. Restricting biomass and opening
grassy canopy

14. Grass dropping seed into gaps
after fire

16. Restricting tree regrowth

17. Rejuvenating vegetation

19. Allowing sub-dominants to persist

20. Opening niches for species to move to
in adjoining vegetation

21. Issues with fire in current-day Australia

27. Can these goals be achieved by
other means?
• Cut and bale
• Slashing
• Grazing
– Deferred
– Rotational
• Herbicides
• Combinations of the above

28. Grazing
• Grazing can be effective in maintaining or increasing
native cover in semi-natural grasslands, but as a
management tool requires good stock management
skills
• Deferred (short or long term) or rotational grazing aims
to graze pasture intensively (crash or cell grazing) at the
point where annual grasses have raised (but not
ripened) seed heads (early spring), and then remove
stock over summer when natives are setting and
dropping seed
• Conversely, set-stocking has been shown to have
negative effects including selective grazing of native
herbs, trampling, soil compaction, importation of weed
seed, localised deposition and return to the soil of dung
and urine

29. Mowing/baling
• Slashing/mowing of grass biomass (native and exotic) on
public roads is a common practice due to the ready access of
machinery and relatively low cost
• In native grasslands mowing is ideally followed by raking and
baling to remove fallen biomass as herbage can return
unwanted nutrients to soils, smother vegetation or restrict
seedling recruitment
• Mowing and baling of built up grass canopy (autumn through
winter) can reduce competition on wildflower species and
provide recruitment gaps for seedlings
• Drawbacks of mowing include the possible introduction of
weed seeds on equipment, soil compaction, and physical
damage to plant structure by the tires of mowing equipment

33. Cut & Baling

35. Seed Hay

36. GGRP burns

37. Burn cues –
> 70% vegetative cover

38. Burn cues –
Dry material above 150 mm

39. Chepstowe

41. Patch burns

44. Hamilton

55. Is burning always best?
Probably not always but it is a very effective tool for grassland management in many situations