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Bushfires cause catastrophic across Australia. In the Black Summer of 2019-20 alone, 103,400 square kilometres of habitat went up in flames.

The irony is, laws to protect native vegetation did nothing to prevent this destruction. This is because, in most states, these laws make it hard for private landholders to burn on their own land, meaning more fuel is left to feed bushfires.

We have a chance to change that now in South Australia, where the is under review.

With greater knowledge and understanding of the role of fire in the Australian landscape, we can take better care of native vegetation on private land as well as public parks. There’s a strong case to be made for private landholders to conduct their own cool burns, for dual purposes of reducing fuel load and restoring ecosystems.

Fire can be good for biodiversity

A wide range of species will benefit from good fire management, which creates a patchwork of different ages of vegetation.

Some plant and animal species are found only in . Others need recently burnt areas. Many shrubs only occur in areas burnt in the past .

Fire is also needed to maintain food supplies for many threatened animals. For example, the feeds almost exclusively on the seeds of drooping sheoak trees. But seeds become scarce in long-unburnt vegetation.

Breaking up the landscape should also mean fewer animals will be caught in each fire, because they have places to which they can escape.

Managing fire at landscape scale

Proactive burning can , when managed at the . This requires everyone to manage fire on their own land in a coordinated way. Such an approach emulates Indigenous land management and was partially adopted by land managers in southern Australia .

Private landholders are no longer allowed to contribute to these efforts, perhaps because the . However, without landholder involvement, fire management capacity is severely limited.

For instance, ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia’s has managed only on Kangaroo Island since Black Summer. Given forest fuel loads can reach dangerous levels , the next big one may not be far away.

Climate change means . Addressing this escalating risk requires allowing landholders to manage fire hazards on their own land.

The devastating Black Summer wildfires

The Black Summer fires killed an estimated and drove closer to extinction.

Human lives were lost, livestock perished. More than half of Kangaroo Island burned, including areas that had not seen fire since the 1930s. Along with , about 40,000 hectares of native vegetation burned on privately owned land.

While nothing could prevent the , many of Black Summer’s fires started earlier. They may have been better controlled, or stopped altogether before conditions got out of hand, if the vegetation was not so thick and connected. The very small amount of fuel reduction being undertaken on private land is inadequate.

Burning does not equal land clearing

In 1985, SA introduced the to protect native vegetation. These effectively the widespread clearance of native vegetation in the state.

However, they have done little to maintain or restore its ecological condition. Since the laws were passed, we have learned more about the effects of fire in . We now know proactive use of fire can make vegetation more and . So, fire needs to be .

While well-intended, the existing legislation discourages burning by private landholders, making it almost impossible for them to take responsibility for reducing fuel loads on their own land. This is because South Australia’s defines all burning as .

What do other states do?

Both and also classify burning as clearing. In Victoria, approval for burning on private land is and appears to have no provision for ecological burning.

Elsewhere, burning is only considered to be clearance when it is intentionally used for the purpose of destroying native vegetation, as in , and the , or remnant trees, in the case of the .

All states and territories allow exemptions for the purpose of bushfire prevention or fire fighting. None has incorporated fire management for ecological purposes into their native vegetation legislation.

An opportunity for legislative change

So far, proposed to the SA have missed an opportunity to reduce wildfire risk across the state.

This could be fixed by simply changing the definition of clearance to exclude fire used for ecological purposes. This is effectively the case in Queensland, where fire is only considered to be clearing when it is specifically used to .

SA’s Native Vegetation Council would then need to provide guidance on how landholders should burn to both reduce fuel loads and benefit biodiversity. This should extend the to provide the type of detailed ecological and operational information that is provided in .

Changing South Australia’s Native Vegetation Act to facilitate fire management by landholders is one step we can take to minimise the risk of catastrophic wildfires. The next steps are trusting landholders to take this responsibility seriously and help them do so. This would bring South Australia back to the forefront of native vegetation management in Australia.

Gabriel Crowley is a former member of Kangaroo Island Landscape Board, and is on the Kangaroo Island Bushfire Management Committee. The author’s views expressed here do not represent those of either organisation.

Stephen A Sutton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.