Bushfire Planning Workshops - Gladstone
Building bushfire resilience, management, and capacity landholder training.
Training rural landholders to increase community bushfire resilience, management, awareness, and capacity. Together with Gladstone Regional Council, this project aims to deliver training to landholders who live in identified rural and rural residential communities that are at risk of bushfire hazards.
Healthy Land & Water’s Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium (QFBC) is delivering the Community Bushfire Planning Workshops within the Gladstone Regional Council LGA.
The purpose of this training is to increase community bushfire resilience, management, awareness, and capacity.
The project includes three Community Fire Information Nights and three Property Fire Management Planning workshops.
The project will focus on:
- Increasing stakeholder and community knowledge of best practice bushfire mitigation.
- Better understanding of what practical measures can be taken to enhance bushfire resilience.
- Reduction in future disaster risk.
- Six events in three separate geographic locations with the Gladstone LGA.
What we did
Delivering hands-on learning via training field days.
This project delivered through workshops, involved:
- Increasing bushfire management awareness and capacity in rural residential areas that are vulnerable to bushfire risk within Gladstone Regional Council LGA.
- Providing landholders with relevant information on prevention and preparedness.
- Facilitating their understanding of the impacts of these measures on “whole of landscape” bushfire mitigation.
- Assisting landholders in their understanding of the role of fire in supporting biodiversity conservation and maintaining healthy ecosystems at a local, catchment, and landscape scale.
- Teaching by learning on the field.
Measuring success
As a result of the program, the following has been achieved:
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Delivery of three Community Fire Information Nights to introduce community members to a range of general bushfire topics and provide engagement opportunities for communities to meet and greet local government, QFES, and associated local rural fire brigades and traditional owners.
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Delivery of three Property Fire Management Planning workshops to assist landholders or managers to reduce the threat of bushfires/wildfires to life and assets on their property, whilst protecting and enhancing the diversity and abundance of native plants and animals.
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Increased stakeholder and community knowledge of best practice bushfire mitigation through improved land management.
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Land use management decision-makers within communities were enabled to better understand what practical measures can be taken to enhance bushfire resilience.
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Reduced future disaster risk and increased resilience of targeted communities and beyond to the bushfire hazard.
Why this project is important
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Effective fire management is crucial to the preservation of life, property, and biodiversity in Rural South East and Southwest Queensland. Bushfires are an inherent part of the Queensland landscape and in many areas, bushfire risk is increasing because of hotter, drier weather conditions. The devastating bushfires across much of Queensland during the Black Summer bushfires are an example of what we can expect in the future and demonstrate the potential for severe to catastrophic fire weather. These Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium workshops provide landholders with relevant information on prevention and preparedness and facilitate their understanding of the impacts of these measures on “whole of landscape” bushfire mitigation. Furthermore, the workshops assist landholders in their understanding of the role of fire in supporting biodiversity conservation and maintaining healthy ecosystems at a local, catchment, and landscape scale. |
Project snapshot
| Project name: | Fire Planning Workshops - Gladstone |
| Project manager: | Rachael Nasplezes, Healthy Land & Water |
| Catchment: | Gladstone Regional Council LGA |
| Timing: | 2022-2023 |
| Partnerships: | This project is supported by Healthy Land & Water, the Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium (QFBC) and by Gladstone Regional Council. |
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Project collaborators
This project is supported by Healthy Land & Water, the Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium (QFBC), and by Gladstone Regional Council.
