Simulating fuel management for protecting regional biodiversity under climate change

Climate change is resulting in larger, more frequent, and more severe wildfires which have increasingly negative impacts on people and the environment. Under these circumstances, it is critical to determine whether fire management actions can mitigate biodiversity impacts under future fire regimes. However, it is currently unclear how changing climate and management interact to influence the spatial distribution of risks to biodiversity. We used fire simulations to quantify the influence of 13 fuel management strategies on animal biodiversity in the Otways, southeastern Australia, under four alternative climate scenarios. Our management strategies include combinations of prescribed burning, mulching, and strategic fuel breaks modelled in various spatial configurations and frequencies. We assessed the capacity of treatments to reduce risk of fire to animal biodiversity by quantifying changes to extent burnt, wildfire frequency and wildfire severity. All management strategies reduced the average annual area burnt across the landscape, however, there was considerable variability over time and under different climate models. Similarly, spatial shifts in fire frequency and severity in some cases resulted in the shifting of fires away from some areas of high value to animals. There is no one size fits all management strategy for reducing impacts to biodiversity under variable future climates. However, all the strategies tested here reduced median impacts relative to a do-nothing approach for at least some aspects of the fire regime or for animal biodiversity. We highlight the importance of evaluating fire management effectiveness against a range of metrics to ensure multiple objectives are met under the increasingly unknown climate conditions we can expect going forward. •Some shifting fire regimes increase risk to biodiversity•Fuel management reduces risk to high biodiversity areas•Management effectiveness varies with climate and location•Simulation of fire regimes is useful for evaluating management effectiveness•Multi-criteria approaches enable design of management programs that meet multiple objectives