Impact of changes in lightning fire incidence on the values of the Tasmanian wilderness world heritage area

The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area has ecosystems and cultural landscapes that have been created and/or influenced by the interactions between the physical environment, the biological environment, fire regimes and people. Lightning is the dominant cause of fire in the 2010s, yet was rarely recorded as a cause of fire before 1980, when arsonists caused most fires. The main potential impact of this change in primary cause of fire incidence on the values of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is the loss of ecosystems dominated by highly fire-sensitive palaeoendemics, organosols and Aboriginal cultural landscapes. At the same time as these values are threatened, a lack of burning threatens some fire-dependent vegetation types. We suggest an increase in planned burning of fire-tolerant and fire-requiring vegetation, maintenance of ignition suppression, an improvement in rapid response capability and an improvement in rapid detection of lightning fires is required in order to maintain many world heritage values.