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The fire that launched a campaign

Do you remember how intense Black Summer was? With much of Gippsland already on fire, on December 31, 2019, a dry lightning storm passed across the high country of north eastern Victoria and East Gippsland, starting hundreds of new fires. Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMV) crews and aircraft swung into action, and did their best to quell the many small fires that were slowly consuming individual trees.

As a volunteer with the Mt Hotham – Dinner Plain fire brigade, I headed up the hill as the area was evacuated. There were four fires around Dinner Plain, all small and slowly consuming the unfortunate trees that had been hit by lightning.

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AI and fire fighting. What’s going on?

Whether it is in a national park or other public land, a paddock or a house fire, one of the most important aspects of stopping fires is to get on to them quickly. The sooner that firefighters arrive, the smaller the fire will be and the easier it is to contain. In Victoria, one of the ways we try to keep fires small during high fire danger days is by launching aircraft as soon as a fire is detected. Often aircraft can then get on scene and start to contain the fire before local brigades arrive. This system (called pre-determined dispatch or PDD) was developed as part of the  response to the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission (VBRC), and was based on a model used in a number of other states. Under PDD, fire fighting aircraft are mobilised as soon as a call out occurs for local fire brigades with a trigger needed to authorise the launch of aircraft.

Other ways we get onto fires quickly includes things like deploying remote area firefighters onto new start fires, inserting rappel crews from helicopters, and sending multiple vehicles at the same time to ensure there are enough resources to tackle the fire. We use real time analysis of satellite images and on some days put aircraft up for surveillance (rather than firefighting) purposes. There is lots of chatter about using drones that could carry water or fire retardant that could be sent to put out small new start fires. And of course, we have traditionally relied on staffed fire lookout towers to spot fires while they are small.

In recent years Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been billed as being a new option for spotting new start fires quickly.

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First summer fire in the VIC mountains

The awful fires of Black Summer linger in our memory. The land slowly recovers. Since then, things have been fairly quiet in recent summers in the mountains of the mainland high country. With the first mountain fire of the season now contained, and vast areas of fire damaged forests in recovery from previous fires, it is essential that with any new start fire the authorities:

  • Get on to new start fires as rapidly as possible
  • Escalate the availability of resources to contain the fire, rather than ‘letting it burn’
  • Ensure that fire management plans highlight the need to exclude fire from fire sensitive or recovering areas and the protection of ecological as well as human assets.

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Snow gum summit tickets now on sale

The second snow gum summit will happen on Ngarigo Country in Jindabyne over the weekend of March 14 and 15 next year.

The first summit happened at Dinner Plain earlier this year, attracting about 100 people, who heard from wonderful speakers.

Tickets for the 2026 gathering have just gone on sale. Like the 2025 event, this is expected to sell out, so grab one today if you’re planning to attend.

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Fire: how do we control things when we can’t control things?

The Tasmanian National Parks Association (TNPA) recently dedicated an issue of their newsletter to the question of how to manage wild fire in Western Tasmania. As has been widely noted, including here at Mountain Journal, fires having been getting more intense in western lutruwita/ Tasmania since a ‘tipping point’ sometime around the year 2000. Since then, there has been an increase in the number of lightning-caused fires and an increase in the average size of the fires, “resulting in a marked increase in the area burnt”.

As TNPA notes in the introduction:

The direct impacts of climate change for Tasmania are changes to weather patterns with corresponding changes to levels of temperature, rainfall and evaporation – most likely a warmer, drier climate overall.

The outcomes of some of these changes are beyond our ability to influence. For example, there are no options for protecting an entire landscape from drought, although it may be possible to save examples of individual species.

As discussed in the following essays, the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires is already resulting in demonstrable impacts on some of Tasmania’s most highly valued species and ecosystems (paleoendemics and alpine ecosystems) and options do exist for how it is managed.

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Skiing in the Pyrocene

Back in 2022, I helped host an event at Mt Hotham called Climate change, fire and the Alps. I remember being struck by something that was said by one of the speakers. Craig Hore, who at that point was a Ranger in Charge of Fire and Emergency Operations North East District, at Parks Victoria, reflected on his long connection to the mountains. Fire regimes in the high country have changed in the last quarter century, with more frequent and intense fires.

Craig reflected on the fact that since the fires of 2002/3, the mountains have been transformed. With ever more frequent fire and drier conditions, he doesn’t think that we can go back to what the Alps used to be like. In his early days as a Ranger he could drive through older forests for hours. But now so much of the park has been badly impacted by fires. “I doubt we will ever see those old forests again.”

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Snow Gum Summit will return in 2026

Snow Gum Summit – Next Ascent: Protecting Alpine Landscapes

Friends of the Earth Melbourne is excited to share that we are organising a second Snow Gum Summit, which will take place in March 2026 on Ngarigo Country in Jindabyne. The Summit will bring people together from across the Australian Alps bioregion spanning Victoria, NSW and the ACT, to address the threats facing these iconic landscapes we all know and love.

Snow gum forests and woodlands are under accelerating stress from climate change, fire, and beetle-driven dieback. The widespread dieback is equivalent to that of a mass bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef. Without bold interventions, these ecosystems face ecological collapse within our lifetimes.

The summit will happen over the weekend of March 14 and 15.

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FFMV fleet ‘offline’: what does this mean for the high country?

DEECA and Forest Fire Management Victoria have grounded the entire ultra-light firefighting fleet in Victoria just weeks before fire season commences.

Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMVic) and the Department of Environment, Energy, and Climate Action (DEECA) have grounded their fleet of 290 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons and 59 Unimogs. According to reporting from the ABC this was due to safety concerns. There are reports of cracking in the chassis of G-Wagons.

What will this mean for fire fighting in the high country?

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National Climate Risk Assessment – what it means for mountain environments

The National Climate Risk Assessment (the National Assessment) was released this week. Prepared by the Australian Climate Service, it aims to provide an assessment of risk across 8 key systems and 11 regions on the continent, prioritising key risks both within each system and across systems.

This approach aims to provide an understanding of who or what might be at risk from a changing climate, across different areas of the country and paints a national picture for decision makers, to help them prioritise adaptation actions.

A key finding is that Australia’s climate is already changing and will continue to change into the future. The country is likely to experience more intense and extreme climate hazards, and in some cases in areas where people and places haven’t experienced these hazards before.

It is a complex document and while it doesn’t specifically focus on mountain areas, many references are relevant to the mountainous region of the south east and lutruwita/ Tasmania. Risks from climate change include increased stress from higher temperatures, increased fire risk and continued decline in snow pack.

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Best practise fire fighting

The 2024/ 25 fire season was a long one in south eastern Australia.

While there were large and destructive fires in western Victoria (particularly in the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park and Little Desert National Park – details here), there were no enormous ones in the mountains. But if you track what happens in the high country, you will recall that we did have a number of significant ones last summer, including the Mt Matlock fire in the Thompson River catchment (which provides drinking water for Melbourne) and the Mt Margaret/ Licola fire, which grew to around 5,600 hectares. There are some resources on these fires available here.

There is a significant story from this latter fire which is worth retelling.

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VIC government must increase efforts to sustain Ash forests

Ash forests – forest comprised of Mountain Ash, Alpine Ash, or sometimes both – are some of the most iconic forest types in Victoria, or even the world. Covering around 500,000 ha of Victoria and stretching from the Otways to the north-eastern boundary with NSW, their stronghold is in the Central Highlands to the east of Melbourne and through the higher ranges of Gippsland and the north east of the state.

These forests have a complex relationship with fire: these forests can live with some fire – but not too much. Scientifically known as ‘obligate seeders’, after severe bushfire, ash forests are killed, but prolifically regenerates from canopy stored seed. The important point here is that these slowly regenerating forests cannot produce seed for 20 years after they regenerate from fire. This means they are highly vulnerable to shortened fire intervals – the exact challenge that land managers in Victoria are facing with climate change.

Once a mountain ash or alpine ash forest has burnt numerous times, it may eventually fail to regenerate, which can lead to population collapse and a change of ecosystem type. This sounds simple, but ecologically, this is dramatic. A tall forest – high in carbon stocks and habitat – changes rapidly to a short shrubland or grassland.

This not theory. This situation already exists among alpine ash forests. The massive bushfires in 1998, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2013, 2014 and 2019/20 and meant that over 97% of Alpine Ash distribution burnt. These fires overlapped and some areas burnt two to three times across two decades (Fagg et al. 2013; Bassett et al. 2021), leaving 43,000 ha of Alpine Ash forest at risk of collapse (Fairman, 2023).

Mountain Journal has long reported about threats to Ash forests and the need for greater government intervention (check here for some of the articles).

Now people involved in the recovery of Ash forests have recently spoken out about the threats posed to these forests.

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Heading off ecological collapse in the mountains

Snow Gums are the classic alpine tree of the Australian High Country. And they’re now at risk.
Snow gums can survive fire. However, climate change driven fire seasons are leading to more frequent fire, which is causing more death of trees and changes to forest structure. Dieback, which is caused by a native beetle, but becoming more damaging due to the effects of climate change, is devastating large sections of the high country. In many places, localised ecological collapse is now occurring.

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