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102,915 is primarily pine5,000 is out of a total available area of 850,000.We also manage harvest and regeneration of the native sandalwood resource in the rangelands

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As most of you will have seen from time to time the bush burns quite well so fairly logically fire is a significant threat to the forest industry. This applies to both native forests – this photo is of some of the karri regeneration areas which were cleaned up by the Northcliffe fire….

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But in particular the plantation estate where our reliance on fire sensitive exotic species makes us particularly vulnerable.

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FPC has lost an average of a bit over 1,000ha of plantation to fire per year between 2008/09 and 2015/16. 2008/09 Yanchep-Pinjar and Ferndale-Lewana. 2014/15 Pinjar Gnangara. 2015/16 Harvey Coast.

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There is a significant financial cost attached to this loss. We estimate that the fires of 2015/16 impacted the FPC to the tune of about $14M in lost revenue and replant costs.

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An independent review of fire risk found that in a worst case scenario FPC could lose more than 10,000ha of plantation in one event (Northcliff shape over Blackwood Valley). A loss of this scale would threaten the future of the softwood industry in WA.

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FPC have insured the plantation asset for the last 2 years. However insurance is not the best solution to the problem. However extending the insurance arrangement will allow us the time to develop and implement a range of proactive protection measures which will offset the requirement to purchase insurance. What we really want to do is stop it burning. DBCA are obviously key to that. You complete nearly $3m of mitigation and preparedness works for us under the annual works plan and come running when fire threatens plantation on State Forest and ED land (and sharefarms if not otherwise engaged!).This presentation will focus on the proposed improvements in plantation fire protection.

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So how do this when we are a relatively small agency and our people are pretty busy delivering all of those logs? We call our big brother to come and do the heavy lifting for us. The biggest chunk of this goes into fuel reduction burning as we are firm believers that this is the most effective means of stopping the large fires which are likely to hit us hardest. Under our annual works agreement we generally target a burn area of about 20,000 hectares for plantation protection purposes. The FPC also spends around $500K internally on firebreak maintenance and upgrade and construction of strategic fire access.

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So DBCA do a pretty good job with what we give them but we are looking at making a few changes to where our investment is directed so we get the best possible value from it. These two aerial photos show the Gnangara plantation north of Perth in 2003 and 2015. Notwithstanding the seasonal difference you should be able see that a lot of what was under pine has now been harvested and not replanted to assist in reducing the draw down on the Gnangara mound. Unfortunately a fair slice of FPC’s mitigation funding still goes towards the protection of veldt grass and prickle bush in this area. So FPC is working with DBCA and Treasury to try to find an alternative source of funding to manage fire in this area so we can shift ours to an area where we actually have some trees and that’s primarily in the SW Region.

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And within the regions where we do have trees we are working to better direct the mitigation effort toward those plantations which have the greatest value to us and our customers. Priority 1 are …..So we have picked out the plantations that have large areas of P1 and P2 and are working with DBCA to focus efforts on these plantations. We are aiming to get the % of adjoining fuels less than 6 years old up to around 50% for these plantations.

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As well as improving the targeting of our current mitigation funding we are also investigating opportunities to provide additional funding to assist in addressing current burning shortfalls. This fuel age map shows that while DBCA have made some excellent progress in the last couple of years we still have a fair bit of work to do to get to where we want to be. The blue is FPC plantations, the greens are what has been burnt in the last three years so really good progress in that period but you will note that we didn’t get a lot done around the plantations between 2012 and 2015 and there is still a lot of fuels older than 7 years around our estate. So we are talking to DBCA about how they might utilise some of the money that we previously put towards insurance to boost achievement in protection burning. That means looking at options like using this money to help pay for travel and accommodation for crews from other regions to come in and assist and for overtime to allow activity to continue over weekends.

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This means coming up with work that DBCA crews can undertake in and around the plantation estate so that when something does kick off they will be in a position to hit it more quickly.Within the FPC there are a lot of experienced fire managers. We operate under an MOU with DBCA that makes our staff available to assist with both suppression and burning activities. Recent staff reductions have meant that it has been difficult to maintain this involvement at the levels we would like but we are working to rebuild this.We are also putting significant resources towards improving our suppression equipment, we currently have about 27 light units and we have just purchased another heavy duty to give us 3 truck units. The main reason why we are working to increase our internal capacity is that we are in the middle of a plantation expansion program in the south west region which is primarily focussed on freehold land which is not covered under our Agreement with DBCA. This means we need to be in a position to respond to fires threatening these new plantations in our own right.

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Also helping us in this respect is an arrangement between the states plantation growers which has been developed over the last few years. Under the FIFWA Plantation Growers Fire Agreement the bigger plantation managers in the south west have all committed to assisting each other in the event that their respective estates are threatened by fire. It brings together some significant resources including heavy fleet, machinery and light fast attack units. It also brings some pretty serious expertise in bush fire fighting with many members of the group having extensive experience in this field. Evidenced by all the grey hair that can be seen among the group.

under the While DBCA, DFES and Local Government Bush Fire Brigades represent a substantial fire fighting capacity there is a need for us to develop an additional or alternative suppression capacity.

There are occasions where these agencies will have other priorities and may not be able to adequately respond to our situationWhere FPC owns land we have a legal responsibility to attempt to suppress fires on that landWhile on sharefarm plantations legal responsibility for initial response rests with the

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landowner few have the capacity to respond meaningfully to plantation fires.

The FIFWA Plantation Growers Fire Cooperative represents an excellent opportunity to develop an additional suppression capacity. This cooperative consists of a group of plantation management companies who have pooled their collective suppression resources to create a very useful combined capacity including heavy fleet, machinery and light fast attack units. It also brings significant expertise in bush fire fighting with many members of the group having extensive experience in this field.

Members of the cooperative have committed to assisting each other in the event that a fire is in or threatening any of the member organisations plantations.

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So that in a nutshell is what FPC is up to in the fire management space.

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