Christchurch’s peri-urban wildfire management strategy: How does it measure up with international best practice?

Abstract

The 2017 Christchurch Port Hills Fires were an expression of increasing peri-urban wildfire threat in NZ. Internationally, traditional response management of wildfire threat has been complemented by place-based and pre-emptive social and spatial strategies. The formal recovery plans for the Port Hills Fires highlight the emerging role of social programmes but a distinct lack of landscape-scale spatial planning in New Zealand wildfire management practice and research. Spatial dynamics have had a clear impact on the nature of the Port Hills peri-urban wildfire threat, yet the current recovery process largely reinstates the spatial patterns which heightened the risk, scale and impact of the 2017 fires.