For many years the NSW Nature Conservation Council (NCC) has been holding a biennial bushfire conference. NCC is the peak body for environmental NGOs in NSW, with a long interest in bushfire management to protect both people and the environment.
The 13th Biennial Bushfire Conference was held in Sydney over three days in May, with a theme of “Managing Bushfire Together: applying science, skills and stories“. Main sponsors were the NSW Rural Fire Service, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and World Wide Fund for Nature.
IBG made a short conference presentation on Learning from past fire operations for future success, an examination of how well reviews and research have delivered lessons for bushfire suppression out of the Black Summer fires. The conclusion was that flawed processes have delivered poorly on operational matters and both change and more work are needed. A fully referenced version of the paper can be found under Our reports.
The conference brought together over 300 people from more than 130 different organisations. They were bushfire practitioners, researchers, conservationists and people from local government and state agencies.
The conference program included 46 presenters covering a wide range of bushfire-related topics, including First Nations perspectives and projects, research by academics, government scientists and bushfire practitioners, community and resilience programs and bushfire management.
Independent Bushfire Group 