Statewide overview and highlights

Bushfire risk management is everyone’s responsibility.

The bushfire management sector – including land managers and fire and emergency management agencies, have a key role to play in reducing bushfire risk across public and private land.

Whether through ignition prevention activities, the reduction of bushfire fuels on public land, private property or roadsides, maintenance of strategic fuel breaks and access roads, delivery of community education programs, suppression of bushfires or issuing of community warning and advice – a wide range of government agencies and councils make important contributions to the reduction of bushfire risk.

This year’s VBRM Report includes information on bushfire risk reduction activities and outcomes delivered by FFMVic, CFA, the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) and councils. Importantly, individuals, households, and communities also play a part in reducing their bushfire risk. By preparing and practicing a fire-ready plan, reducing bushfire fuels on their property, participating in bushfire management planning processes, and listening out for community warnings – every Victorian can take active steps to further reduce the risk of bushfires to themselves, their families, and their communities.

Overview of the 2023-24 bushfire season and suppression effectiveness

Bushfires are a natural part of the Victorian environment and although land managers and fire agencies take active steps to prevent and prepare for bushfires and respond rapidly to suppress bushfires with aggressive first attack, it is not always possible to control every bushfire at a small size.

In 2023-24, FFMVic attended 1,179 fires impacting 50,890 hectare of State forests, national parks and other protected public land. FFMVic contained 96% of fires on first attack and 92% within 5 hectares, exceeding its bushfire suppression targets. Response information of FFMVic during the 2023-24 period is shown in Table 2.

CFA bushfire suppression performance information is published in the CFA Annual Report 2023-24.

Table 2: FFMVic response information

Fire Danger Periods and Total Fire Ban days

A Fire Danger Period is when the CFA restricts the use of fire during hotter times of the year. The rules help prevent fires from starting by limiting the types of fires that can be lit and restrict or impose conditions on some high-risk activities. The CFA declares the Fire Danger Period for each municipality (shire or council) at different times in the lead up to the fire season – depending on the amount of rain, grassland curing rate and other local conditions. The Fire Danger Period may be declared as early as September in some municipalities, and typically remains in place until the fire danger lessens, which could be as late as May. Within the Fire Danger Period, Authorised Officers issue permits for igniting fires for specific purposes. The permits stipulate the appropriate conditions under which fire can be ignited.

A Total Fire Ban (TFB) is a period when all fires are banned, and people working outside (such as farmers harvesting) are asked to reconsider their activities. A TFB is called for one or more days when the fire risk is Extreme, and the CFA Chief Officer considers there to be a considerable risk that if fires start, they would be difficult to control or would have a significant impact on communities.

During the 2023–24 reporting period, 11 Total Fire Ban (TFB) days were declared across Victoria, an increase from 4 TFB days declared in the two preceding years (Table 3). TFB declarations are made at a district level, so a TFB day may apply to some districts while not affecting others. While there were 11 TFB days at the state level in total between October 2023 and March 2024, on some of these days multiple districts had a TFB in place. The cumulative number of TFBs across all districts in 2023–24 totalled 34, compared with 6 in 2021-22 and 11 in 2022-23.

These figures illustrate the overall pressure on resources when multiple districts experience TFBs on the same day. The details on the restrictions for both the Fire Danger Period and a TFB are available on the CFA’s website Can I or Can't I?.

Table 3: Total Fire Bans declared in 2023–24, 2022-23 and 2021–22. Data aligns to the financial year.

* Victoria is divided into 9 Fire Weather Districts based on council boundaries.

Mitigation and prevention – key highlights

The bushfire management sector mitigated bushfire risk through a wide range of prevention and preparedness activities including ignition controls, community engagement, planned burning, non-burn fuel treatment, and maintenance of strategic fuel breaks and the strategic fire access network.

Campfire safety

Compliance activities carried out by the Conservation Regulator relating to campfires is important for reducing the risk of accidental bushfire ignition. The risk posed by campfires is reduced by:

• providing clear information about campfire regulations and campfire safety
• raising awareness of campfire regulations at customer centres, during patrols and through media campaigns
• analysing intelligence from reports of unsafe behaviours and high-risk times and locations
• conducting surveillance and patrols in high-risk locations, during fire hazard days, and targeting high-risk behaviours, and
• initiating (and publicising) enforcement actions.

The Conservation Regulator received reports of 669 fire-related offences in the public land component of the fire protected area during the 2023-24 reporting period. Fire related offences include unattended campfires, and include other offences such as fires within the fire danger period, fires on total fire ban days and fires in fire protected areas.

Victoria Police enforce the Country Fire Authority Act 1958 (CFA Act) and Summary Offences Act 1966 provisions regarding fire prevention. In these Acts, it is an offence to leave a campfire unattended, or to have a campfire if the fire causes damage or endangers life or property. Additionally, during fire danger periods, it is an offense to leave a fire unless it is fully extinguished or left under the control of someone capable of managing it safely.

FFMVic staff conduct patrols or make incidental observations of unattended campfires during day-to-day forest and fire management. Some of these incidents will result in a fire related offence (included in statistics above). FFMVic attended 581 unattended campfires in 2023–24. This is close to half (49%) of all fires attended by FFMVic (1,179).

The number of unattended campfires represented an increase of 31% from the 444 unattended campfires recorded in 2022-23.

The Hume region had the highest number of unattended campfires (213) and Port Phillip region the lowest number of unattended campfires (11). Table 4 provides an overview of the total number and percentage of unattended campfires attended by FFMVic per region in 2023-24.

Table 4: Total number and percentage of unattended campfires attended by FFMVic per region in 2023-24.

*Note: The line items in this table to not add up to 100% as an artefact of rounding each line item.

Community education, awareness and engagement

Community-based bushfire management is a community-led approach that supports communities and agencies to connect and make better-informed decisions to manage bushfire risk. It includes working with communities to identify local priorities, develop mutual goals and solutions, build relationships and use locally tailored processes before, during and after bushfires.

CFA plays a valuable role in helping communities to plan and prepare for bushfire. Information about CFA community engagement activities delivered is published in the CFA Annual Report 2023-24.

FFMVic held 13 stakeholder and community forums on bushfire management and planned burning during 2023–24. This exceeded the target to hold 12 stakeholder and community forums.

Fuel managament

In 2023-24, FFMVic completed 316 planned burns across 122,291 hectares and carried out 1,610 non-burn fuel treatments over an additional 16,163 hectares. FFMVic also constructed 37 km of strategic fuel breaks and improved 2,082 km of strategic fire access roads (note that these planned burning figures exclude cultural burns delivered by Traditional Owners with FFMVic support, which also reduce fuels and bushfire risk).

Statewide fuel-driven bushfire risk was 64% on 30 June 2024, which achieves FFMVic’s target to maintain fuel-driven bushfire risk at or below 70% of maximum levels. While four FFMVic regions and 11 Districts maintained fuel-driven bushfire risk within long-term planning target levels, two regions (Grampians and Port Phillip) and five districts (Midlands, Metro, Yarra, Latrobe and Ovens) exceeded their targets.

Further information on the statewide, regional and district fuel-driven bushfire risk levels, reasons why some regions and districts are above long-term planning targets and specific actions being taken by FFMVic to respond to elevated fuel-driven bushfire risk in these areas is provided in Section 5 and Section 6.

During the same period, CFA completed 236 planned burns over 5,499 hectares, including 912 km along road and rail corridors, and conducted 51 non-burn fuel treatments across an additional 732 hectares (note that these planned burning figures exclude cultural burns delivered by Traditional Owners with CFA support, which also reduce fuels and bushfire risk).

Relative contribution to risk reduction made by planned burning and bushfires

Modelling can be used to determine the relative contribution of planned burning and bushfires to risk reduction realised through the reduction of bushfire fuels. Presenting the contribution to risk reduction from planned burns and previous bushfires as a 10-year rolling average is a more meaningful and accurate way to view this data compared to doing it as a year-to-year contribution. The reason for this is the significant year-to-year variability in risk reduction contribution. For example, in years with very large bushfires, such as the 2019-20 fire season, the majority of risk reduction would be attributable to bushfires, whilst in years with minimal bushfire activity, almost 100% risk reduction is attributable to planned burning.

Although there is considerable variation from year to year, planned burning accounts for more fuel-driven bushfire risk reduction than bushfires. This is despite bushfires impacting a substantially greater area than planned burns over the last 10-year period.

Over the past decade, despite planned burning accounting for only 37% of the total area burnt (compared to 63% burnt by bushfires), planned burning accounted for 62% of the total modelled fuel-driven bushfire risk reduction across Victoria compared to 38% from bushfires. This is because FFMVic use the best-available science and data to identify and target areas for planned burning in strategic locations (such as close to high-value assets) to reduce the risk to life and property, whereas bushfires are indiscriminate and may occur anywhere in the landscape.

For more information on statewide, regional and district fuel-driven bushfire risk levels, refer to Section 5 and Section 6.

Ecosystem resilience – key highlights

Fire is a natural and vital process for many of Victoria’s ecosystems. Many plants rely on fire to reproduce. However, inappropriate fire regimes and particularly multiple severe fires in close succession can have detrimental impacts on the resilience of natural ecosystems.

In the context of bushfire management, ecosystem resilience is an ecosystem’s capacity to absorb natural and management-imposed disturbance but still retain its basic structure – in terms of species abundance and composition – function and identity over space and time.

Victoria currently monitors ecosystem resilience using two key metrics:

• Tolerable Fire Interval (TFI) – which measures how well vegetation is likely to regenerate after fire, with regard its reproductive maturity, and
• Growth Stage Structure (GSS) - which provides information on the diversity of ages of forests and other vegetation types, which are important for providing habitats for different plants and animals.

It is desirable to minimise the total area burnt (by bushfires and/or planned burning) while vegetation is below reproductive maturity or in early growth stages. Sometimes planned burning in areas below minimum TFI is undertaken where there is an important need to reduce bushfire risk. Planned burning may also be applied is areas below minimum TFI and/or in early growth stages where there is a need to reintroduce fire back into a bushfire affected area to create a diversity of growth stages (e.g. a large bushfire scar such as those in Gippsland following the 2019-20 Black Summer fires) and/or there is a net benefit to ecological resilience by using low-intensity planned fire to seek to reduce the impact of large high-severity bushfires.

In 2023-24, the area of public land vegetation within its TFI increased to 30% (up from 28% in 2022-23). Approximately 47% of vegetation on public land in Victoria remains below its minimum TFI, showing an improvement in this category (down from 49% in 2022–23).

The proportion of vegetation on public land in the mature (35%) and adolescent (27%) growth stages increased while the proportion in the juvenile stage (13%) decreased. The area of vegetation in the oldest growth stage (4%) remained the same.

Although ecosystem resilience measures are demonstrating improvement, the area of vegetation below minimum TFI and in the earlier growth stages is still too high due to the impacts of the 2019–20 bushfires.

In 2023-24, FFMVic conducted 37 planned burns across 3,846 hectares for the primary purpose of improving environmental outcomes.

FFMVic also partnered with universities and other academic institutions to conduct research that improves how ecosystem resilience is represented and measured.

For more detailed reporting, refer to Section 5 and Section 6.