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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/01/indigenous-cultural-burning-managed-australias-bushfires-long-before-colonisation-its-needed-now-more-than-ever-a-study-says>
"Indigenous cultural burning practices halved the shrub cover across south-east
Australia thousands of years before colonisation, reducing the intensity of
bushfires, new research suggests.
The study’s authors argue that “wide-scale re-integration” of cultural burning
practices, in combination with western fire management techniques, is “crucial”
at a time when wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense due to the
climate crisis.
The study, published in the journal
Science, found that shrub cover in
south-east Australia since European colonisation has increased to the highest
levels ever on record, increasing the risk of high-intensity fires.
Indigenous cultural burning practices involve systematically applying frequent
low-intensity fire to the land. They differ from the hazard reduction burning
used by fire authorities, which can be more intensive and extensive.
The study found that during the early to mid-Holocene period, 6,000 to 12,000
years ago, the shrub layer in woodlands and forests accounted for about 30% of
land cover. Indigenous cultural burning halved shrub cover to 15% about 6,000
years later. Since European colonisation, that figure has increased to 35%, the
researchers found.
A study co-author, Dr Simon Connor, of the Australian National University, said
the reduction in the shrub layer made it more difficult for ground fires to
travel upwards into the forest canopy and create high-intensity fires.
“Once Europeans come in and Indigenous populations are displaced from their
land, then fires come back in a big way – the shrub layer comes back in an
unprecedented way,” Connor said. “The pace of change in the last couple of
hundreds years has been so fast compared to what’s happened over thousands of
years.”
The study’s findings pointed to “a way that fire can be used to fight fire”,
Connor said. He emphasised that cultural burning involved an intimate
understanding of vegetation in different ecosystems and could involve “not
burning a particular vegetation type”.
“Many Indigenous communities are really keen to reintroduce or reinvigorate
cultural burning,” Connor said. “But when they try to do it, they hit … layers
of bureaucracy that prevent that cultural practice being carried out.”
Prof David Lindenmayer, a forest ecologist also at ANU, who was not involved in
the research, said there was no doubt that cultural burning was very important
in certain areas."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
