Bushfire Conference 2025

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW’s 14th Biennial Bushfire Conference, Can we burn to learn? Sustaining people, nature and Country, brought together over 275 delegates for two days of presentations by 62 speakers, with an additional Royal National Park Field Day taking place on Friday 23rd May 2025.  

The event was held both live and online in Sydney at the Teachers Federation Conference Centre in Surry Hills, Sydney. A conference dinner and poster session all took place in addition to core conference proceedings, which featured leading academics, practitioners, Traditional Owners, agencies, and communities coming together to explore why, when, and how can we best use fire across landscapes to protect what we most care about. 

Conference proceedings - including recordings from 8 conference sessions – will be shared with conference delegates in July 2025.  

Images (top to bottom):  RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers' opening address on 21st May; delegates ask questions of presenters; delegates in the conference auditorium

Speakers:  

The conference featured Keynote presentations from speakers including:

• NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Rob Rogers ASFM, conference opening address 

• Emeritus Professor Ross Bradstock (University of Wollongong), Environmental outcomes of strategic fire management: known knowns and unknowns and the case to 'burn in order to learn' 

• Professor Don Driscoll (Deakin University), New insights from The Australian Megafire Synthesis 

• Associate Professor Rachael Nolan (Western Sydney University), Forests, fire and carbon stocks: a case-study of the 2019/20 Black Summer fire 
• Dr. Jack Pascoe (University of Melbourne), Restoring Biocultural Landscapes in Maar Meereeng 
• Dr. Rachel Morgain (Melbourne Biodiversity Institute), Fostering socio-ecological approaches to addressing systemic risks in bushfire emergency response, recovery and resilience 
• Greg Mullins (Emergency Leaders for Climate Action), Los Angeles and wholesale destruction: could it happen here? 

Visit our Speakers page to learn more about these and other featured conference presenters. 

Theme:

The conference theme was ‘Can we burn to learn? Sustaining people, nature and Country.’ Why do we choose to burn and, when and how can we best gain wisdom from using fire in different vegetation types to protect what we most care about. With the impacts of recent fires still imprinted on us and the ongoing certainty of future fires, now is an opportune time to test how we best work with fire, to re-think why we burn and evaluate what we are aiming to achieve. 

Subthemes:

Mountains to Coast

Rolling Hills to Deserts

Horizons

What our 2025 Bushfire Conference delegates said:

“An excellent mixture of scientific research and practical information.”  

“I thought it was excellent – I really enjoyed meeting researchers and practitioners from a wide range of fields and groups.” 

“I appreciated learning from those in my industry doing different things and learning from those in other fields, with a mixture of science based and cultural.” 

“Such a great conference – so much so, that I filled a complete notepad with my scribblings.” 

Field Day – Friday, 23rd May 2025:

Following the Nature Conservation Council of NSW (NCC) Bushfire Conference 2025, many delegates joined us for a day in the field to learn about managing fire together at the Royal National Park on Friday 23rd May 2025. Delegates heard from representatives from the Sutherland Shire Environmental Centre (Dr Ross Jeffree), NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (David Croft), NSW Rural Fire Service (Sean Cavanagh), and NSW DCCEW, Science and Insights Division, Applied Bushfire Science Program (Andrew Denham). They joined for a bushwalk and discussion through the Bundeena area of the park by NCC Bushfire Advisory Committee members (Dr Grahame Douglas and BFAC Chair Bob Conroy).

Images (top to bottom):  NCC Bushfire Advisory Committee Chair Bob Conroy leads a talk in Bundeena at the Royal National Park; delegates at the bushwalk talk in Bundeena; delegates on the Field Day bushwalk in the Royal National Park. 

Nature Conservation Council of NSW would like to acknowledge the generous support of our conference sponsors: