While the upcoming fire season is may not high on many people’s priority list, now is the time to start preparing for next summer.

It’s something our private estate forest guardians well know, and why they’ve been busy over the past months and years preparing for any fire threat.

In a similar vein, government agencies, such as Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT), have spent countless hours and many hundreds of thousands of dollars protecting our public estate.

It’s a wise investment. Fire doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t know the difference between private plantations, managed regrowth forests, our protected forests or our towns.

That’s why it’s imperative that all those responsible for our vast tracts of forest – from the guardians of our parks and reserves, our public forest managers and our private estate owners -need to have the ability to share information and work in a coordinated manner when fire threatens our forests and communities.

We’ve already shown that public and private estate managers can work together to protect Tasmania when the current government expanded the use of the Tasmanian Government Radio Network (TasGRN) to include our private estate forestry businesses last summer.

It makes sense to grant access to our businesses. Between them, our working private forest custodians manage and protect over 400,000 hectares of land across the state, much of it close to regional towns.

The success of the 2024-25 fire season proves that the new incoming government, no matter its colour, should make the sharing of the network a permanent arrangement during times of fire threat.

Similarly, our private estate managers have invested millions in world-leading fire detection software, which uses strategically placed cameras to identify and pinpoint any fire outbreaks as soon as possible.

That means we can stop any fire threat quickly – ensuring the protection of our estate, our parks and reserves, and the community at large.

We know that STT have invested in similar technologies, and we believe Tasmania can be better protected if the information our systems gather can be pooled – to get a better understanding of the holistic fire threat across the state.

Make no mistake, protecting our forests and communities against the threat of fire is a battle – and the key to winning any battle is to have access to the most complete information of the threat… something sharing resources can provide.

Tasmanian government agencies are already coordinating responses, and the forestry industry is keen to play its part in keeping Tasmanians and our forests safe.

Nick Steel is the Chief Executive Officer of the Tasmanian Forest Products Association.