Aim: Many dry forests and woodlands worldwide are fire-prone and support bird and plant communities shaped by fire. Changes in fire regimes, including the time between fires, have important implications for population trajectories. We studied the responses of bird and plant communities of heathy woodlands to time since the last fire, a key measure underpinning fire management, to evaluate whether current management strategies will enhance conservation of multiple taxa.

Location: Otway Ranges, south-eastern Australia.

Methods: We surveyed birds and plants at 38 sites, stratified by an 80-year post-fire chronosequence, and modelled the responses of individual species, functional groups and community composition to fire history. Model outputs were used to evaluate the impacts of fire management as guided by: (1) domains of tolerable fire intervals, a concept based on plant life-history traits, and (2) the spatial arrangement of post-fire age-classes, a surrogate for animal habitats.

Results: Bird and plant communities both responded to time since fire. Notable relationships included: a high reporting rate of ground-foraging birds and high cover of shrub-species richness immediately after fire; and a gradual increase up to ~50 years and ~20 years post-fire of birds that forage in the midstorey and facultative-resprouting plants, respectively. Post-fire age classes had distinct bird and plant assemblages. Tolerable fire intervals currently used by land managers (min 12 – max 45 years between fires) encompassed the peak in richness of most plant functional groups but not the preferred habitat of lower-midstorey foraging birds.

Main Conclusions: Fire management based solely on birds or plants risks population declines in other biota. Use of functional groups can help guide strategic planning, such as spatial representation of post-fire age-classes across the landscape. Maintaining late-successional vegetation will provide habitat for several groups of birds, while fire is needed at sufficient frequency to prevent loss of plants and ground-foraging birds.

Birds were surveyed at 2ha sites across a chronosequence of time since fire. Surveys were 20 minutes. ll species seen or heard were recorded. The number of survey rounds (out of a total of six/site) during which a species was detected is given for each site.

Plants were surveyed at sites by using three 10m x 10m plots. The projected foliage cover of all species was etimated and the mean of the three plots is presented for each site.