Summary1. Rapid environmental change is placing increasing pressure on the survival of many species globally. Ecological refuges can mitigate the impacts of change by facilitating the survival or persistence of organisms in the face of disturbance events that would otherwise lead to their mortality, displacement or extinction. Refuges may have a critical influence on the successional trajectory and resilience of ecosystems, yet their function remains poorly understood. 2. We review and describe the role of refuges in faunal conservation in the context of fire, a globally important disturbance process. 3. Refuges have three main functions in relation to fire: they enhance immediate survival during a fire event, facilitate the persistence of individuals and populations after fire and assist in the re-establishment of populations in the longer term. Refuges may be of natural or anthropogenic origin, and in each case, their creation can arise from deterministic or stochastic processes. The specific attributes of refuges that determine their value are poorly known, but include within-patch attributes relating to vegetation composition and structure; patchscale attributes associated with their size and shape; and the landscape context and spatial arrangement of the refuge in relation to fire patterns and land uses. 4. Synthesis and applications. Refuges are potentially of great importance in buffering the effects of wildfire on fauna. There is an urgent need for empirical data from a range of ecosystems to better understand what constitutes a refuge for different taxa, the spatial and temporal dynamics of species' use of refuges and the attributes that most influence their value to fauna. Complementary research is also required to evaluate threats to naturally occurring refuges and the potential for management actions to protect, create and enhance refuges. Knowledge of the spatial arrangement of refuges that enhance the persistence of fire-sensitive species will aid in making decisions concerning land and fire management in conservation reserves and large natural areas. Global change in the magnitude and extent of fire regimes means that refuges are likely to be increasingly important for the conservation of biodiversity in fire-prone environments.

Movement is a trait of fundamental importance in ecosystems subject to frequent disturbances, such as fire-prone ecosystems. Despite this, the role of movement in facilitating responses to fire has received little attention. Herein, we consider how animal movement interacts with fire history to shape species distributions. We consider how fire affects movement between habitat patches of differing fire histories that occur across a range of spatial and temporal scales, from daily foraging bouts to infrequent dispersal events, and annual migrations. We review animal movements in response to the immediate and abrupt impacts of fire, and the longer-term successional changes that fires set in train. We discuss how the novel threats of altered fire regimes, landscape fragmentation, and invasive species result in suboptimal movements that drive populations downwards. We then outline the types of data needed to study animal movements in relation to fire and novel threats, to hasten the integration of movement ecology and fire ecology. We conclude by outlining a research agenda for the integration of movement ecology and fire ecology by identifying key research questions that emerge from our synthesis of animal movements in fire-prone ecosystems.

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Wildfire refugia (unburnt patches within large wildfires) are important for the persistence of fire‐sensitive species across forested landscapes globally. A key challenge is to identify the factors that determine the distribution of fire refugia across space and time. In particular, determining the relative influence of climatic and landscape factors is important in order to understand likely changes in the distribution of wildfire refugia under future climates. Here, we examine the relative effect of weather (i.e. fire weather, drought severity) and landscape features (i.e. topography, fuel age, vegetation type) on the occurrence of fire refugia across 26 large wildfires in south‐eastern Australia. Fire weather and drought severity were the primary drivers of the occurrence of fire refugia, moderating the effect of landscape attributes. Unburnt patches rarely occurred under ‘severe’ fire weather, irrespective of drought severity, topography, fuels or vegetation community. The influence of drought severity and landscape factors played out most strongly under ‘moderate’ fire weather. In mesic forests, fire refugia were linked to variables that affect fuel moisture, whereby the occurrence of unburnt patches decreased with increasing drought conditions and were associated with more mesic topographic locations (i.e. gullies, pole‐facing aspects) and vegetation communities (i.e. closed‐forest). In dry forest, the occurrence of refugia was responsive to fuel age, being associated with recently burnt areas (<5 years since fire). Overall, these results show that increased severity of fire weather and increased drought conditions, both predicted under future climate scenarios, are likely to lead to a reduction of wildfire refugia across forests of southern Australia. Protection of topographic areas able to provide long‐term fire refugia will be an important step towards maintaining the ecological integrity of forests under future climate change.

Summary1. Vegetation fires can have major social, economic and ecological consequences. Research into fire behaviour has aimed to give managers greater ability to predict and control fires. Fire and grazing are important and interacting disturbances in grasslands. Fire is known to widely affect grazing patterns, but the effects of grazing on the incidence of fire are less well known. There have been few tests of the idea that 'grazing reduces blazing', which has popular and political currency in some countries. This study addresses the hypothesis that grazing affects fire potential in native grasslands. 2. Paired grazed and ungrazed quadrats were established at five lawn and five tussock grassland sites. Fuel load, percentage dead fuel and the number of days sustaining fires where possible were compared between treatments. 3. In lawn grasslands, grazing markedly reduced fire potential through the removal of plant biomass and by preventing the vegetation escaping into the unpalatable and flammable tussock state. Grazing led to increased fire potential in tussock grasslands where animals selectively removed live shoots, leaving a high proportion of dead fuel. 4. The difference in flammability responses to grazing between lawn and tussock grassland appeared to be due to differences in palatability that in turn may relate to soil fertility and the constancy of intense grazing. These differences mean that grazing lawns and tussock grasslands are likely to be subject to differing disturbance regimes. This association between disturbance regime and vegetation structural type suggests that lawns and tussock grasslands represent alternative stable states within the grassland ecosystem. 5. Synthesis and applications. Grazing is only likely to reduce the probability of fire where the bulk of the vegetation consists of potential food for grazing animals. It is likely that the negative relationship between vegetation palatability and fire potential applies to grasslands generally and possibly to many other vegetation types. Grassland managers may need to manipulate disturbance regimes in order to maintain vegetation structural heterogeneity and thereby promote landscape-scale biodiversity.

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In fire‐prone regions, wildfire influences spatial and temporal patterns of landscape heterogeneity. The likely impacts of climate change on the frequency and intensity of wildfire highlights the importance of understanding how fire‐induced heterogeneity may affect different components of the biota. Here, we examine the influence of wildfire, as an agent of landscape heterogeneity, on the distribution of arboreal mammals in fire‐prone forests in south‐eastern Australia. First, we used a stratified design to examine the role of topography, and the relative influence of fire severity and fire history, on the occurrence of arboreal mammals 2–3 years after wildfire. Second, we investigated the influence of landscape context on the occurrence of arboreal mammals at severely burnt sites. Forested gullies supported a higher abundance of arboreal mammals than slopes. Fire severity was the strongest influence, with abundance lower at severely burnt than unburnt sites. The occurrence of mammals at severely burned sites was influenced by landscape context: abundance increased with increasing amount of unburnt and understorey‐only burnt forest within a 1 km radius. These results support the hypothesis that unburnt forest and moist gullies can serve as refuges for fauna in the post‐fire environment and assist recolonization of severely burned forest. They highlight the importance of spatial heterogeneity created by wildfire and the need to incorporate spatial aspects of fire regimes (e.g., creation and protection of refuges) for fire management in fire‐prone landscapes.

Fire plays an important role in structuring vegetation in fire-prone regions worldwide. Progress has been made towards documenting the effects of individual fire events and fire regimes on vegetation structure; less is known of how different fire history attributes (e.g., time since fire, fire frequency) interact to affect vegetation. Using the temperate eucalypt foothill forests of southeastern Australia as a case study system, we examine two hypotheses about such interactions: (1) post-fire vegetation succession (e.g., time-since-fire effects) is influenced by other fire regime attributes and (2) the severity of the most recent fire overrides the effect of preceding fires on vegetation structure. Empirical data on vegetation structure were collected from 540 sites distributed across central and eastern Victoria, Australia. Linear mixed models were used to examine these hypotheses and determine the relative influence of fire and environmental attributes on vegetation structure. Fire history measures, particularly time since fire, affected several vegetation attributes including ground and canopy strata; others such as low and sub-canopy vegetation were more strongly influenced by environmental characteristics like rainfall. There was little support for the hypothesis that post-fire succession is influenced by fire history attributes other than time since fire; only canopy regeneration was influenced by another variable (fire type, representing severity). Our capacity to detect an overriding effect of the severity of the most recent fire was limited by a consistently weak effect of preceding fires on vegetation structure. Overall, results suggest the primary way that fire affects vegetation structure in foothill forests is via attributes of the most recent fire, both its severity and time since its occurrence; other attributes of fire regimes (e.g., fire interval, frequency) have less influence. The strong effect of environmental drivers, such as rainfall and topography, on many structural features show that foothill forest vegetation is also influenced by factors outside human control. While fire is amenable to human management, results suggest that at broad scales, structural attributes of these forests are relatively resilient to the effects of current fire regimes. Nonetheless, the potential for more frequent severe fires at short intervals, associated with a changing climate and/or fire management, warrant further consideration.