What is the 'appropriate' fuel management regime for the Otway Ranges, Victoria, Australia? Developing a long-term fuel management strategy using the structured decision-making framework

Abstract

The Otway Ranges contain many of the highest-wildfire-risk communities in Victoria, Australia. One of the chief risk mitigation measures in the Otway Ranges is planned burning. The location and amount of planned burning that is undertaken need to consider stakeholder perspectives that can be largely divergent, invoking difficult trade-offs for land-management agencies. The structured decision-making framework was utilised to select the most 'appropriate' 40-year cross-tenure fuel management strategy for the Otway Ranges. This paper details the approach undertaken to develop an optimised set of multi-objective fuel management strategies, identify suitable monetary and non-monetary objectives ..