Facebook icon Twitter icon Forward icon

A Message from the Hotspots Team

It has been another busy period for the Hotspots team with the successful completion of the first year of delivery under the revised 2 day program model. Over the 2011-12 financial year the team delivered the program to 17 regional communities across NSW and this year is looking to fill up quickly.

The Hotspots team is beginning to introduce community monitoring as part of workshop delivery with interested landholders. Providing landholders with the opportunity to build on the skills gained during the workshop series and implement basic vegetation, animal identification and fuel load monitoring techniques before and after prescribed burning. Using camera traps, landholders are discovering the types of species they have on their properties and gaining practical insight into how careful land management practices can maintain or improve fire management for both risk and biodiversity.

The Hotspots team is also pleased to continue to be part of other important fire related initiatives including a project working with the Endangered NSW North Coast Emu (a Hotspots and Firesticks Project collaboration); Restoring Habitat for National Threatened Species in the Border Ranges (a Northern Rivers and Southeast Queensland Consortium collaboration); and using Fire as a Restoration Tool in Cumberland Plain (an NCC Bushfire Program project).

As always, the Hotspots team would like to hear from you… please forward your feedback, and be part of our regular “have your say” article.

The Hotspots Team

The 2012-13 Fire Season – an outlook

Michael Gallacher, NSW Minister for Police and Emergency Services has warned “The coming fire season has the potential to be one of the worst in many years and I urge members of the community in those fire prone areas to heed the RFS warnings and get ready now.  Read more...

A Summary of our Workshop Delivery

Spring Glen Workshop

Over the last financial year (July 2011 – July 2012) the Hotspots team has successfully delivered 17 workshop series with over 450 participants and preparations for this year are shaping up with workshop scoping and workshop delivery underway.  Read more...

The Latest Hotspots Landholder Booklet - the Lachlan Region

Lachlan Landholder Booklet

The Hotspots team has released the landholder booklet Managing Fire on your Property: A booklet for landholders in the Lachlan. The booklet translates the latest fire ecology science for the Lachlan region based on a completed literature review by the Hotspots ecologists. Read more...

The Bucketty Community Prepares for the Fire Season – a Case Study

Bucketty

After a history of close calls from wildfire, the Bucketty community in the Hunter-Central Rivers region are taking back the reins for managing their land through the Hotspots program. To learn more about how, read our case study for the Bucketty workshop series.   Read more...

Restoring Habitat for National Threatened Species in the Border Ranges

Mt Lindesay, McPherson Range, the last remaining stronghold of the Eastern Bristlebird

Hotspots was part of a successful joint Caring for Our Country funded project which looks to implement targeted fire management strategies within the Border Ranges (NSW and QLD) to restore critical habitat for the Nationally Endangered Eastern Bristlebird (Dasyornis brachypterus) Read more...

Helping the North Coast Emu – an Endangered Population

Endangered Coastal Emus

Hotspots is working with the community at Bungawalbin to help manage fire for the iconic Endangered Coastal Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) population. The last census count indicates that only approximately 100 birds within this sub-population inhabiting the coastal parts of the Clarence Valley remain    Read more...

Developing a Community Fire Monitoring Kit

Lyrebird

Dr Phil Borchard, the NSW RFS Hotspots Facilitator for the Shoalhaven region in southern NSW is undertaking a community fire monitoring project with landholders to provide them with the tools to undertake ecological monitoring on their own properties. Read more...

A Tribute to Jane Elix

Jane Elix

The Hotspots team would like to pay tribute to Jane Elix who sadly passed away in July this year.  On our very first meeting with Jane the Hotspots team was taken back by Jane's pure gusto determination and no nonsense approach to getting the job done. Read more...