Rural fire forum brings together services

One of the outcomes of the CRC Fire Workshop was the creation of a new body to tackle fire management issues across the whole of north Australia: the North Australian Rural Fire Management Forum.

It involves the heads of the rural bushfire services from Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia together with scientific and communication support from the Tropical Savannas CRC.

The idea stemmed from the fact that the rural fire services operating across north Australia face the same distinctive fire management problems: late, dry-season wildfires spreading over vast areas; working with pastoralist and Aboriginal land managers; dealing with scant resources, harsh climates and remote communities.

There was much to be gained from working with each other - from sharing knowledge to making more efficient use of shared resources to developing common strategies. After all, many of the fire management problems and the fires themselves cross state and territory boundaries in the north.

The first initiative of the forum, which met in Brisbane in mid-May, was to develop a fire management program that took into account the whole of northern Australia. The program has three parts:

• Coordinating the various fire management studies that have started or will soon start across northern Australia;
• Coordinating remote-sensing and ground-truthing research;
• Setting up a communication strategy that brings traditional and experiential knowledge of fire management together with fire research findings.

Funding for this initiative will be sought from the new "targeted investment" Bushcare program recently set up by the Federal Government.