News and Media

Dr Kevin Tolhurst is a fire ecologist at the University of Melbourne and a researcher with the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre. He also gave evidence to the royal commission. Speaking to Alison Caldwell in Melbourne, Dr Tolhurst says the Victorian Premier needs to reconsider his decision. More

Around 110 researchers, fire and land management staff, and land owners gathered in Albury to discuss Bushfire CRC research on alpine fire. More

A Protecting Firefighters Information Package is now available online as a research adoption and learning tool.

The Package combines summaries of presentations made at the Protecting Firefighters Workshop - held at the AFAC / Bushfire CRC Conference on the Gold Coast in September 2009 - as well as an array of supporting written materials.

You can access the Protecting Firefighters Information package through the Bushfire CRC website, or through AFAC's Knowledge Web. 

A highlight of the Bushfire CRC / AFAC 2009 conference was announcing the recipients of the inaugural Bushfire CRC Awards for Excellence.

It is important that our finest students and researchers are recognised and celebrated and these awards are a new initiative to achieve those aims. Works conducted over the life of the Bushfire CRC by a student and by a researcher were considered. The awards included $10,000 to the honoured researcher (Dr Lachlan McCaw) and $5000 to the honoured student (Mr Joshua Whittaker) for research into their field of expertise more.

A seminar and field trip at Casino in northern New South Wales has shown the latest research into burning in young eucalypt plantations.

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Links between the Bushfire CRC and the University of Coimbra, Portugal, have been strengthened with the visit of Professor Domingos Xavier Viegas.

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More than 12,000 attended the Australian Science Festival in Canberra this year, many of them stopping to try on the fire fighter gear.

The event was held alongside the annual CRC Innovations Conference at the National Convention Centre in Canberra in late May.

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Dr Tina Bell has gained a scholarship with the prestigious Fulbright Program. Tina, a Bushfire CRC Project Leader and senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, will travel to the Centre for Fire Research and Outreach (CFRO) at the University of California, Berkeley to study the effect of fuel reduction fires on grapevines more.

A recent visitor to the offices of the Bushfire CFC was Mr Bob Cameron, the Victorian Minister for Police and Emergency Services. Mr Cameron met with Bushfire CRC office staff and spoke to members of the Research Taskforce about their work following the Victorian fires of February 2009.

The Australian Senate passed a resolution on 11 February 2009 that highly supported the work and the ongoing plans of the Bushfire CRC. more.

The long process to secure funding for a new CRC passed its first major milestone – a formal application was submitted to the Australian Government’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research on Wednesday 18 March 2009 more

Sarah McCaffrey of the USDA Forest Service, has joined the Research Taskforce into the Black Saturday fires to share her research on understanding the social dynamics of fire management. More

Bushfire CRC comment for media on the current fires in Victoria can be found here.

Before the current tragic bushfires in Victoria the Bushfire CRC and the Australian Science Media Centre held an online national media briefing on bushfire research. See the coverage here.

Project Vesta fuels and fire behaviour training has been underway across Australia with the most recent training in Hobart, Tasmania. More

The communities around Mansfield in central Victoria have produced a book Wildfire in the High Country. The book, which was launched to the local area in July, is supported by the Bushfire CRC.
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The Bushfire CRC has a new core member. ACT Emergency Services Agency and ACT Parks, Conservation and Lands will become joint core partners of the Bushfire CRC from 1 July 2008. More

Australia is at the forefront of research on community bushfire safety and resilience according to a new book. Community Bushfire Safety brings together the most important community safety research being undertaken within the Bushfire CRC. More

Fire at Ngarkat Conservation Park.

The mallee and heath landscape of Ngarkat Conservation Park in south-eastern South Australia has been deliberately set alight in one of the largest and most comprehensive fire research exercises undertaken in Australia.

More than 100 bushfire researchers and fire agency personnel from around Australia and internationally converged on the parkfor a series of controlled burns under several separate research projects designed to improve fire management in South Australia and nationally. More

A burnt out test car used in the research.

Advice for people trapped in their cars during a bushfire has been updated with a groundbreaking study into what happens to a vehicle caught in the middle of a firestorm.

The study of burnovers in civilian passenger vehicles was conducted at the NSW Rural Fire Service Hot Fire Training Facility on the New South Wales south-coast. Seven used cars were subjected to burnover conditions with a gas flame front simulator. More

The findings of Australia’s most extensive study of the behaviour of high-intensity bushfires in eucalypt forests – Project Vesta – provides valuable new tools and information for fire managers across Australia. More

Normal to above normal fire potential is expected for much of the 2007-8 fire season.

This is the outlook of fire experts from around Australia that gathered to assess the potential for bushfires over the coming months.More

More than 60 residents, land owners and fire and land management staff have heard an update on the latest bushfire research at Stawell in western Victoria. More

Research by Annemarie De Vos into the performance of bushfire face masks has been highlighted in a showcase of early career scientists by the CRC Association. More

A unique mobile laboratory that measures greenhouse gases in Australia’s high country has been launched. More

A visit to the bushfire affected areas around Anakie and the Brisbane Ranges brought a week long conference for science journalists to a close.

More than 500 journalists from around the world attended the World Science Journalists Conference 2007 in Melbourne (16-20 April). In addition to the day tour on the final day, the Bushfire CRC coordinated a session on "Wildfire: Friend or Foe" and an exhibition stand shared with other Cooperative Research Centres. More