A recent study has revealed that Indigenous cultural burning practices halved shrub cover across south-east Australia thousands of years before European colonisation, significantly reducing the risk of high-intensity bushfires.
Since colonisation, with the displacement of Indigenous land management, shrub cover has risen to record levels, increasing the likelihood of severe fires in a rapidly changing climate. The lead researcher, Dr Michela Mariani from the University of Nottingham, and co-author Dr Simon Connor from the Australian National University, argue that wide-scale reintroduction of cultural burning, alongside modern fire management, is crucial for improving landscape resilience. Published in Science, the research highlights how systematic, low-intensity cultural burning maintained open woodlands and prevented dense shrub growth, which helps stop ground fires from climbing into the canopy.
Across southeastern Australia, the study used pollen counts to understand shrub cover history from different time periods and charcoal records in sedimentary layers to calculate historical burning over the past 12,000 years. It also reinforces the importance of local ecological knowledge; Professor David Lindenmayer commented on the findings agreeing that cultural burning in certain areas was crucial and involves an intimate understanding of vegetation carefully tailored to different ecosystems; Lindenmayer also highlights that often some areas were also deliberately left unburnt.
As bushfire risks grow, the authors — and many Indigenous communities — are calling for greater support and fewer bureaucratic barriers to re-establish cultural burning practices across appropriate landscapes.
Read the full article here: 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
Find the original journal paper here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn8668
References: Mariani, M., Wills, A., Herbert, A., Adeleye, M., Florin, S.A., Cadd, H., Connor, S., Kershaw, P., Theuerkauf, M., Stevenson, J. and Fletcher, M.S., 2024. Shrub cover declined as Indigenous populations expanded across southeast Australia. Science, 386(6721), pp.567-573.
This article was written by Campbell Goff, the Healthy Ecosystems Project Officer with the Nature Conservation Council of NSW’s Bushfire Program.
