A look back at the 2020/2021 wildfire season

Over the past two years, we have worked with Scion to develop a summary report of the previous wildfire season to provide learnings for future seasons. The latest full report has been released, and is available here(external link), along with a summary of findings.

Service Delivery Wildfire Manager Tim Mitchell says that the report provides a wealth of knowledge and allows Fire and Emergency to have solid research behind our reduction, readiness and recovery activities when it comes to wildfires. 

“The report includes an evaluation of climatic conditions and incident statistics from the previous wildfire season and aims to help us build on operational reduction and readiness measures, and identify opportunities for continual improvement.

“It helps inform how we work with our land management partners across the likes of farming, forestry and conservation. It even feeds into our marketing campaigns focused on decreasing wildfire incidents across Aotearoa,” says Tim.

The 2020/21 wildfire season was generally not as significant compared to the 2019/20 season. However, there was an increase in the area burnt, and there were several significant fires occurred immediately at the start of the traditional wildfire season.

At a national scale, the total number of wildfires decreased, however the area burnt increased when comparing this season with the 2019/20 season. The drop in the total number of wildfires could be attributed to the less extreme fire weather conditions, COVID-19 restrictions and improved public education on preventing wildfires.

Check out the full report.(external link)

The report itself is commissioned by Fire and Emergency, and undertaken by Scion, a Crown research institute that specialises in research and science for the forestry sector.