We urgently need to rethink how we protect our forests and communities from bushfires
And we need your support for our statewide campaign to challenge the Victorian government’s damaging, dangerous approach to forest fires, especially as our climate heats up.
Donate to our Chuffed campaign
The science is now in. Planned burns don't work. They don't stop wildfires. In fact they can make forests more flammable.
We're urging the government to increase funding for rapid detection and response capability, so that small fires are put out before they become large. This is already an effective strategy. Over this summer, more than 9 in 10 Victorian fires were contained as a result of the first attempt at suppression. And we can do this better.
Planned burns harm human health with widespread smoke across rural and urban areas. They also destroy habitat, wound and kill wildlife, and threaten biodiversity. Fifty per cent of hollow-bearing habitat trees are destroyed or damaged in a planned burn. In setting up for a planned burn, critically important big old habitat trees along forest roads are also cut down, under the guise of “hazardous tree removal”.
$160 million was spent on planned burns last year. This is a massive spend that should be directed instead to improving rapid detection and suppression.
122,000 hectares were lit up last year. Just under 300,000 hectares of state forest, national park and other lands are slated for deliberate burning this year. By contrast, logging affected 50,000 hectares over the whole of the last 13 years of native forest logging in Victoria.
Victoria’s unscientific and ineffective planned burns program is environmental vandalism on an industrial scale.
We need your support to stop this devastation. We need a Pause and Review of this fire management travesty.
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Here's where burning is proposed for 2025
298,000 hectares of planned burns listed for 2025. Source: Joint Fuel Management Plan, rendered on the VFA Forest Mapping Tool.
Compare with Native Forest Logging since 2010
50,000 hectares logged over the thirteen years from 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2023. Source: Logging History layer, on VFA Forest Mapping Tool.
How effective are planned burns?
There are many scientific studies showing that planned burns are of little use for mitigating bushfires. See for instance, Gibbons et al, 2012, Land Management Practices Associated with House Loss in Wildfires.
Planned burns can increase the fire danger within a few years because of the pulse of regrowth that follows. As the understorey grows back after a fire, becoming taller and denser, fire risk greatly increased for the next 37 to 49 years. Source: Don Bradshaw and David Lindenmayer, 2022, Old forests three times less flammable.
Rapid suppression works
The Victorian government already focuses on rapid suppression: “More than 9 in 10 this season have been contained ‘at first attack’ – that is, the first attempt to suppress the fire was successful [and] most (4 in 5) fires that Forest Fire Management responds to, are contained under 5 hectares.” Media Release, Forest Fire Management Victoria, 17 February 2025.
The human health cost of smoke
Smoke carries PM2.5s (particles tiny enough to penetrate deep into the lungs), the most toxic air pollution most of us will ever encounter, triggers asthma attacks and is carcinogenic. In 2016, six days of planned burns around Sydney caused 14 premature deaths, 29 cardiovascular hospitalizations and 58 respiratory hospitalizations.
See:
• Nicolas Borchers, 2022, Health Burden of Bushfire Smoke in Australia.
• R. Li et al, 2018, Function of PM2.5 in the pathogenesis of lung cancer and chronic airway inflammatory diseases.
• Joshua Horsley et al, 2018, Health burden associated with fire smoke in Sydney, 2001–2013.
Planned burn on Gunnai-Kurnai country, February 2025. Photo: Irene Proebsting
A threat to habitat and wildlife
• Philip Zylstra, 2022, Bad fire science can kill our threatened species. It’s time to cooperate with nature.
• B. von Takach, et al, 2022, Long-unburnt habitat is critical for the conservation of threatened vertebrates across Australia.
Damage to hollow-bearing habitat trees
A 2016 Victorian government study found that 25 per cent of hollow-bearing trees that the fire reached, collapsed during planned burns. A further 27 per cent were damaged. If a planned burn is conducted every 7 to 12 years, which is the government's ideal burn cycle, this can mean that most hollow-bearing trees could be lost from that forest within 25 years. See Lucas Bluff, 2016, Reducing the effect of planned burns on hollow-bearing trees.
Tree destroyed during planned burn at Gravel Pit Track, Tallarook Forest, April 2021. Photo: Norm Stimson
"Hazardous tree removal"
This article describes an example of the practice of felling trees, associated with planned burns programs, and the consequences for wildlife: Bianca Hall, 2024, Endangered greater glider found dead next to department’s felling site.
The cost of planned burns and "fuel management"
For details of the $160 million spent in 2023-24 on this so-called fire risk reduction strategy, see Table 21 of the 2023-24 annual report of Forest Fire Management Victoria.
The scale of planned burns devastation
See Table 11 of the 2023-24 annual report of Forest Fire Management Victoria for details of the 122,291 hectares which they burnt that year.
We don't know how much of the proposed 298,000 hectares of burns for 2025 will take place, or where. This often depends on weather conditions, and how much Forest Fire Management Victoria is challenged by the community to avert a burn.
For more information about the science challenging planned burns, download our Fire Fast Facts brochure.