While the flooding from ex Tropical Cyclone Alfred continues to impact northern NSW and southern Queensland and a long clean up gets underway, fire season drags on in much of the rest of the continent.

The AFAC Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for Autumn 2025 identifies a ‘heightened risk of fire for parts of WA, SA and Victoria’.

In WA, increased risk of fire is identified for ‘areas between Perth and Carnarvon, and stretching eastwards across much of the Australian mainland’s southern coastline through SA and reaching all the way to southwest Gippsland in Victoria’.

Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMV) is currently in the process of burning significant areas of Gippsland (and elsewhere in the state) as part of it’s planned burn program.

Planned burning is intended to reduce fire risk, however the introduction of fire then triggers rapid regrowth of plants and burnt areas become as flammable again within a couple of years. Check this info sheet from the Victorian Forests Alliance which outlines why planned burns are not particularly helpful for mitigating bushfires.

Many of the burns planned for Gippsland has deeply concerned locals because of the ecological impacts of the burn. One in particular is galvanising the community and there is now a campaign to have the burn halted. This is at Mississippi Creek.

In central Victoria, traditional owners the Dja Dja Wurrung (also known as DJAARA - their representative body) are reasserting their right to manage Country. As part of this process, they are rolling out their interconnected land management programs of Djandak Wi (Country Fire) and Galk-galk Dhelkunya (Forest Gardening).

Parts of the Wombat Forest exist on Djaara land. Storm clearing activities in the Wombat in 2022 caused considerable alarm within the forest activist community because of a connection with the (thankfully now defunct) state logging agency VicForests.

The scale of the works caused great concern but also resulted in significant misunderstanding about the nature of Forest Gardening. In response to the controversy DJAARA have stated that: 

'The removal of wind thrown timber was not Forest Gardening. To date, the only contemporary Forest Gardening application has been at one small trial site.'

‘Forest Gardening is not logging. It is healing Djandak (Dja Dja Wurrung Country) and includes cultural thinning, revegetation and cultural burning. Our knowledge represents over 65,000 years of land management experience’.

In an attempt to help forest activists to better understand Dja Dja Wurrung aspirations for Country, FoE has been helping to organise regular ‘walks on Country’ with representatives from DJAARA.

Who would have thought you could find fifteen people prepared to rise early on a wintery Sunday morning, travel far from home and scratch around the wet undergrowth of a little-known forest in South Gippsland to search for koala poo? Members of the SKAT collective were pleasantly surprised with everyone's commitment to learn how to survey one of the last intact forests for the Strzelecki koala.

Some of the enthusiastic folk keen to learn how to survey for koala presence.

In early July this year, Alberton West residents notified FoEM that their remnant bushland home to many threatened species was to be logged by Vicforests. Alberton West forest is home to the genetically significant and threatened Strzelecki Koala, as well as the Powerful Owl, Greater Gliders and the Lace Monitor, and that’s just to name a few. Listen and watch local Aboriginal elder Alan Coe share his perspective on the interruptions to the forest ecology.