After receiving a warning about incoming catastrophic fire conditions from VicEmergency, Tilly Schier and her partner evacuated from Chewton in central west Victoria, making the 116-kilometre trip to Melbourne before any of the fires had begun. 

With pets in tow, they arrived in the city as alerts from VicEmergency began flooding in, warning of several fires burning near their local townships.

“We were watching from the city where we were completely safe and seeing [bushfires] grow and move just closer and closer to our workplace, all these people we knew, and then closer to the farm.”

The fires intensified overnight. By the following day, a cool store facility which their employers, and another 90 local businesses used, had been destroyed. Tilly’s workplace lost 500 drums of produce in the fire. 

The bad news kept coming in over the following days, “we found out bit by bit, person after person, [saying that] they've lost everything,” she said.

Over 50 homes in the local area were destroyed. 

The Mount Alexander Shire was not alone. During the first month of this year, wildfires burning across Victoria destroyed approximately 434 homes, damaged more than 435,000 hectares of land and claimed one life.

As climate change intensifies both the ferocity and frequency of wildfires, Tilly said many regional communities now see disasters as increasingly common. 

“This isn't just a freak day. This is our reality, and it's not going to get better.”  

Researchers argue that these blazes reflect a broader shift in how fire must now be understood—not as isolated emergencies, but as a structural feature of Australia’s landscape in a warming climate.

Rethinking Fire 

The research team at FLARE is one of Australia’s largest fire research collectives based at the University of Melbourne,  connecting climate science, land management and community preparedness to prevent recurrent catastrophic fire seasons. 

Professor Trent Penman said worsening bushfires cannot be explained solely by changing weather conditions as climate change is also reshaping Australia’s vegetation in complex and regionally specific ways. 

These shifts alter fuel loads and composition, which in turn shape how fires ignite, spread and intensify.

“A good example [from] the Northern Territory are things like buffel and gamba grasses [which] are completely invading different areas,” he said, “they're completely changing the ecosystem and therefore changing the fire regimes.” 

In response, FLARE is examining how region-specific strategies can be developed for policymakers.

Associate Professor Hamish Clarke said there is no universal solution.

“It's not the same solution everywhere… come back to the local landscape, what's the vegetation? What's the fire history, the regime, the patterns. What works there may not work somewhere else.” 

Penman added that adopting place-based strategies may require acting before every variable is fully understood.

“We don’t have time to do all the research. If we just sit here and say we need to do more research, climate change will have come past us before we have the data to do it properly.”

Consequently, Penman says for bushfire management to function properly, it must not only be responsive but forward thinking in nature, planning for both today and 20 years from now. 

Staying one step ahead

Such an approach requires collaboration across disciplines, sectors and knowledge systems, Clark said.

“We need to be listening to as many different people and sources as possible.” 

He pointed to Indigenous fire knowledge as an example.

“Indigenous knowledge about fires is the greatest kind of national assets, [even] global assets, we have. You know, this is incredibly rich, nuanced and complex going back tens of thousands of years. It is very place based.”

Even so, members of the FLARE team emphasise that wildfire will remain part of Australia’s landscape. Damage to infrastructure and ecosystems cannot be eliminated entirely.

“Rather than trying to save everything and failing at everything, we need to probably focus in on a subset of things that we think we can save, and do [it] well,” said Penman.

Inevitable trade-offs 

One example lies in communities situated beside dense, shrubby forests with vegetation capable of producing intense fires.

A way to manage such a situation could be to regularly burn those areas frequently or use mulching to change the vegetation structure so it becomes a grassy understory, similar to a public park. 

In such a landscape, fires approaching houses would encounter less fuel and generate less heat, potentially reducing damage to homes.

This would require sacrificing some ecological diversity, affecting birds, plants and small mammals. 

Penman said these decisions must be made within the context of the broader landscape. Such ecological changes in one area must be balanced by the existence of sufficient habitat elsewhere to support vulnerable species. 

As such, irresponsible direct action has the potential to result in the immediate extinction of a particular species.  

Looking ahead, Penman said there will be times when protecting human life will take precedence, and others when endangered species will be prioritised.

While there will be more fires and more damage across our communities and landscapes, Penman is positive about the future of wildfire management in Australia.

“We have the diversity of people needed to make these complex decisions so we shouldn’t shy away from those. We have enough people in the space that are able to do it, we just need to figure out how to do it.”

“But it requires massive change in the way we have our legislation. It requires massive change in the way we think about things and it requires compromise.”

Image Source: Danielle Bonica