A period of lower bushfire risk is likely to persist for three to five years, providing a short window of opportunity to start managing fires more sustainably and prevent last summer’s devastation being repeated a decade from now.

Kevin Tolhurst, associate professor at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Science school of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, says severe fire seasons will become more frequent due to climate change in the longer term.

This year though, there is “little prospect” of another early start to the fire season due to moister conditions, a lack of fuel and more normal weather patterns.

“The likelihood of severe bushfires in south-east Australia later in the year and over summer is much reduced,” Mr Tolhurst says. “This doesn’t mean there won’t be bushfires but they’re not likely to be as extensive and severe as last fire season.”

Last bushfire season should be a turning point for land management in Australia, Mr Tolhurst says. He is calling for a concerted effort to manage the bushfire risk which he says should involve carefully planned and implemented prescribed fires, as well as planning and preparing for the inevitability of bushfires.

“We have a short window of opportunity to start managing fires in the landscape more sustainably. If we don’t, in a decade’s time we may see the Black Summer repeat itself,” he warns, adding that the current royal commission into natural disasters and senate and state inquiries must lead to change.

The window to plan ahead this year comes as fuel and drought, two primary bushfire energy sources, are currently at low threat levels, and there is little chance of areas severely burnt in 2019/20 carrying an intense fire “for at least five years”.

Fuel is unusually low because last season’s fires burnt through large tracts of landscape and it will take up to ten years for them to redevelop. Plants will regrow in bushfire-damaged areas but the fuel load will be low for several years.

Also different this year are moist conditions. Drought leading up to last fire season was severe, with environmental moisture in the lowest 5% of records for much of south-east Australia. Fuel levels were high because of the drying trend associated with climate change and a lack of low-intensity fires over the past couple of decades, which allowed fuel levels to build up.

That triggered the first fires in June last year in Queensland and ended with unprecedented mega firefronts and the deaths of 34 people, not including hundreds more deaths related to smoke inhalation, and devastation to more than 8 million hectares of land.

Since then, a change in weather patterns brought good rains to eastern Australia from late February to April.