Discover how prescribed burns renew wildlife habitat

Swamps are wet, muddy – you wouldn’t think they could be burnt as part of a prescribed burn, and that it would be a good thing!

Fire Management Officers from National Parks and Wildlife Service world alongside kids from Mt Compass Area School recently, checking on how their local swamp is going after a prescribed burn occurred in the area in autumn 2024.

What did they find?

There were already so many signs of life! The students were excited to find tiny carnivorous sundews and other species, previously overshadowed by larger plants, growing beautifully in the now open swampy earth.

Mount Lofty Ranges southern emu wrens, one of the threatened species this burn was undertaken to help, were sighted during recent surveys in nearby habitat. It is expected that they will start using their regenerating habitat in the next few years.

This burn is one of a series of ecological burns in swamps on the Fleurieu Peninsula that are planned to renew habitats for threatened plant and animal species.

There are three main ways that burning creates habitat for emu wrens:

1. Burning dominant overstorey plants lets light in to let different plants grow.

2. As these plants grow the vegetation structure changes, providing new places to perch and increased availability of insects to feed on.

3. A variety of habitats are created by burning some areas and leaving others, to give the birds options for nesting and feeding while the burn site regenerates.

What role do swamps play?

Swamps are important for many reasons. They improve water quality by acting as natural filters, trapping dead vegetation and sediment. The dense vegetation also slows the movement of the water preventing erosion and washouts.

The network of swamps on the Fleurieu Peninsula once covered around 2,000 hectares, but less than half of that remains, mostly in a fragmented and degraded state. These special ecosystems support hundreds of species of plants and animals, many of which are nationally threatened and unique to the region. Only about 2% of the remaining swamps are in good condition, so their protection, restoration and management are vital.

Without the ecological burns, the swamps would be dominated by just a handful of plant species, most of them common, along with a lot of dead plant material, and without active management the local emu-wren population may become extinct.