After the Fire – What Happens to the Trees?

After a bushfire has been through an area, there's obviously a massive amount to deal with. Houses, fences, roads and infrastructure all become priorities pretty quickly.

But then there's the trees.

I've worked in a couple of fire-affected areas over my career, carrying out hazard tree work and bushfire clean-up, and one thing I've learnt is that a burnt tree isn't necessarily a dead tree, and a tree that's still standing isn't necessarily a safe one either.

There's a fair bit more to it than just looking at whether the leaves are green.

Australian Trees Are Pretty Bloody Tough

A lot of our native trees are incredibly well adapted to fire.

Anyone who's driven through a burnt area a few months after a fire has probably seen epicormic growth covering the trunks and branches of eucalyptus. Trees that looked completely cooked not long beforehand can suddenly be covered in new growth.

Others can regenerate from below ground through lignotubers or protected buds.

That's why I don't think the approach should automatically be:

"It's burnt. Cut it down."

Sometimes giving a tree a chance to respond can tell us a lot more than what we can see immediately after the fire.

That doesn't mean every burnt tree should stay either.

Alive Doesn't Always Mean Safe

This is probably the important distinction.

A tree can survive a bushfire and still have significant damage.

Fire can affect the trunk, major limbs, buttress roots and the root system around the tree. Existing hollows, cavities and defects can also be made worse.

Then you've got to consider where the tree actually is.

A damaged tree standing in the back corner of a paddock is a completely different risk to the same tree hanging over someone's house, driveway, road or work area.

That's where actually assessing the tree becomes important rather than making a decision based purely on how burnt it looks.

Sometimes the Best Recommendation Is to Wait

Not every tree needs an immediate yes-or-no decision.

There are obviously trees where the damage is significant enough that action needs to be taken straight away, particularly where there's an immediate risk to people or property.

But there are also plenty where monitoring and reassessment can be the better option.

Give the tree some time and you can start seeing how much canopy returns, whether sections of the crown decline, whether defects become more apparent and generally how the tree responds after the fire.

Sometimes the recommendation might be removal.

Sometimes it's pruning.

Sometimes it's restricting access around the tree for a period.

And sometimes it's simply:

Leave it alone and come back for another look later.

Dead Trees Aren't Always Useless Either

Something else worth considering after bushfire is habitat.

A dead or heavily damaged tree might not have much value from a traditional amenity point of view, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has no value at all.

Hollows, dead limbs and standing trunks can provide habitat for birds, bats, possums and plenty of other wildlife trying to recover in the same landscape.

Where it's appropriate and the risk can be managed, habitat pruning or retaining sections of a tree can sometimes be a much better outcome than simply dropping the whole thing.

Obviously that's not going to work everywhere, but it's another option worth having on the table.

It's About Prioritising What Actually Needs Attention

This becomes particularly important when you're dealing with more than a handful of trees.

If you've got a property, roadside or larger area containing dozens or even hundreds of fire-affected trees, treating every tree as equally urgent doesn't make much sense.

That's where tree surveys and risk assessments become useful.

Trees can be mapped, inspected and prioritised so that the trees requiring immediate attention are dealt with first, while others can be retained, monitored or reassessed later.

At the end of the day, post-bushfire tree assessment isn't about trying to save every tree.

And it isn't about cutting down everything that's been burnt either.

It's about working out what's damaged, what's dangerous, what's recoverable and what can reasonably be retained.

That's a much better starting point for helping a landscape recover after a fire.

Nomadic Arborist provides tree risk and condition assessments, tree surveys and post-bushfire tree assessments for private properties, councils, contractors and land managers.

If you've got fire-affected trees and aren't sure what needs immediate attention and what can be retained, get in touch and we can have a look.