The Landscape Conservation Initiative (LCI) objective is to reduce the extent and intensity of wildfires, and the impacts of invasive animals on threatened species, by monitoring the effectiveness of managed fire.

Key questions:

  • How effective is patch burning for protecting species with fire sensitive habitats from regular damaging, large, ‘hot’ bushfires over the short-term (e.g. 5 years)?
  • How effective is patch burning coupled with introduced predator control at benefiting the biodiversity over the short-term (e.g. 5 years)?
  • What will be the response of introduced predators to an annual control program?

The LCI is based on the premise, or hypothesis under test in this adaptive management program, that the combination of large fires that destroy habitat and expose animals to predation by introduced predators increases the risk of local extinction of fauna with late-seral habitat requirements such as sandhill dunnarts and malleefowl.

Therefore, good fire management – and a reduction in the density of introduced predators – should result in an increase in the density and distribution of native fauna.

Increased burns of smaller size (relative to the scale of current wildfires) – as was the practice of the Tradition Owners – together with a level of introduced predator control, should benefit the biodiversity in a landscape of the GVD by retaining structurally-diverse habitats and therefore improving refugia for fauna.