Forging Preferred Landscapes: Burning Regimes, Carbon Sequestration and ‘Natural’ Fire in Cape York, Far North Australia (original) (raw)
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Fire in the Australian Landscape
Australia is a fire prone landscape which has been subjected to wild and planned fire for millennia. The European settlement of Australia changed fire regimes in the landscape by imposing European landscape values to very different ecosystems. Prescribed burning can provide key aspects of the natural disturbance regime under human management (Boer et al 2009). In the last century, land managers have learnt the importance of prescribed burning to protect people, property, and to regenerate fire-prone ecosystems. This review will examine the historic fire regime in Australia, especially Mediterranean-climate regions, and the precedent for fire from Aboriginal management. It will broadly include contrasting management values of Aborigines, early Europeans, conservationists and foresters. Prescribed burning must be used effectively and efficiently to protect things we value; a summary of the literature which discusses these issues will be presented. Finally, limitations and suggested improvements for prescribed burning practices will be discussed and evaluated.
Re-invigorating Cultural Burning Practices in Victoria
Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia, 2019
The importance of Australian Aboriginal Traditional Owner knowledge in relation to fire as a tool for ecological sustainability is, for the most part, well recognised in western scientific discourse.1 The centrality of fire in the lives of the precolonial peoples within the boundaries of contemporary Victoria, can be seen in the Dreaming stories recorded by the early European amateur ethnographers, who were themselves a part of the colonisation of Australia. This paper discusses the creation of the Victorian Traditional Owner Cultural Fire Strategy (the strategy) between 2018 and 2019 and seeks to understand how this strategy might carry the cultural, social, and spiritual significance of fire for Victorian Aboriginal people into the future on a state-wide policy platform.
International Journal of …, 2003
The extent to which use of fire by Aboriginal peoples shaped the landscapes and biota of Australia is a contentious issue. Equally contentious is the proposition that attempts should be made to support and reestablish customary practice. Some dismiss Aboriginal practice as little more than culturally endorsed pyromania, and consequences for land, vegetation and wildlife management as incidental and unintended outcomes. We argue that this view of Aboriginal practice is at odds with available evidence regarding motivations for use of fire, and detailed and sophisticated descriptions of the consequences of poor fire management for the maintenance of important resources. We suggest that misunderstanding arises, at least in part, from the contrasting views that (i) objectives of Aboriginal land managers and the values they seek to extract and maintain in savanna landscapes are or should be similar to those of non-Indigenous land managers; or (ii) the notion that their goals are inherently and entirely incompatible with those of non-indigenous interests. We illustrate our argument with examples that include assessments of ecological consequences of 'prescribed' Aboriginal practice, statements from Aboriginal people regarding their objectives in applying those prescriptions, and the level of active organisation required for their effective implementation. Finally, we propose mechanisms for wider application of Aboriginal prescriptions in tropical landscapes to meet a range of land management objectives.
Journal of Biogeography, 2002
Aim To compare ®re behaviour and ®re management practice at a site managed continuously by traditional Aboriginal owners with other sites in tropical northern Australia, including the nearby Kakadu National Park, and relate those observations to indicators of landscape condition. Location Dukaladjarranj, a clan estate in north-central Arnhem Land, in the seasonal tropics of northern Australia. The site abuts a vast sandstone plateau that is an internationally recognized centre of plant and animal biodiversity. Methods Ecological assessments included: (1) mapping of the resource base of the estate from both traditional and ecological perspectives; (2) aerial survey of the extent of burning, distribution of the ®re-sensitive native pine Callitris intratropica, rock habitats, and a range of macropod and other fauna resources; (3) fauna inventory; (4) detailed ecological assessment of the status of ®re-sensitive vegetation; and (5) empirical assessment of the intensities of experimental ®res. Ethnographic information concerning traditional ®re management practice was documented in interviews with senior custodians. Results Experimental ®res lit during the study were of low intensity compared with late dry season ®res reported elsewhere, despite weather conditions favouring rapid combustion. In contrast to other parts of the savanna, fuel loads comprised mostly leaf litter and little grass. We found that (i) a large proportion of the estate had been burned during the year of the study (ii) burned sites attracted important animal food resources such as large macropods (iii) important plant foods remained abundant (iv) well represented in the landscape were ®re sensitive vegetation types (e.g. Callitris intratropica Baker & Smith woodlands) and slow growing sandstone`heath' typically dominated by myrtaceaous and proteaceous shrubs (v) diversity of vertebrate fauna was high, including rare or range-restricted species (vi) exotic plants were all but absent. Traditional practice includes regular, smaller ®res, lit throughout the year, and cooperation with neighbouring clans in planning and implementing burning regimes. Main conclusions We attribute the ecological integrity of the site to continued human occupation and maintenance of traditional ®re management practice, which suppresses
Fire in the Forests? Exploring the Human-Ecological History of Australia's First Frontier
Environment and History, 2019
In his landmark book The Biggest Estate on Earth, historian Bill Gammage argues that before the arrival of white settlers, the whole Australian continent was a manicured cultural landscape, shaped and maintained by precise, deliberate and repeated fires. In Aboriginal hands, fire made the entire country ‘beautiful and comfortable’, and so Australia was one vast ‘estate’, a giant ‘park’, a series of ‘farms without fences’. These words imply that Aboriginal rights to land are closely tied to universal fire regimes. Gammage’s book has been well-received and celebrated. But it has also polarised debates on fire regimes, especially the extent to which fire really did shape every corner of the continent, and the related assertion that contemporary ecologies are the result of the cessation of fire since 1788. This paper integrates ethnographic history and archaeology with geography, soil science and ecology in order to set Gammage’s model against a particular ecological zone – the dense River-flat Forests that once lined Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury-Nepean River in New South Wales, Australia. Dyarubbin was occupied by Aboriginal people for perhaps 50,000 years, and from 1794 it became the site of the first major settler farming frontier. Paying attention to the local and the particular, this paper asks: was this fiercely contested country a tidy mosaic of open forests, water and grasslands created by cultural fire? Was Aboriginal burning here extensive or limited? What aspects of human and ecological history might be obscured by the universalising model in which cultural fire dominates above all other factors? Did the Aboriginal landscape in turn shape the settler one, and what were the consequences for land and people?
Aboriginal fire-management practices in colonial Victoria
Aboriginal History, 2022
Through a close reading of particular episodes and a focus on the minutiae of action and context, this article adds to the literature on the customary use of fire by Aboriginal people in southeastern Australia by highlighting the historically significant role Aboriginal people played in toiling alongside colonists and fighting fires during the colonial period. By scrutinising the written colonial records it is possible to reveal some of the measures that Aboriginal people used to help the colonists avoid cataclysmic fire. Lacking many direct Indigenous sources due to the devastation caused by rapid colonisation, we do this for the most part through a detailed examination of sheep and cattle graziers’ journals, newspapers and government records. The article commences with an overview of colonists’ observations of and attitudes regarding Aboriginal practices in relation to fire with specific reference to the region now referred to as Victoria and New South Wales. It concludes with an examination of the few recorded instances in which Aboriginal people tutored colonists in fighting fires, educating them how to use fire as a management tool, and the significant value they placed in Aboriginal knowledge relating to fire.
Catastrophic Bushfires, Indigenous Fire Knowledge and Reframing Science in Southeast Australia
Fire, 2021
The catastrophic 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires were the worst fire season in the recorded history of Southeast Australia. These bushfires were one of several recent global conflagrations across landscapes that are homelands of Indigenous peoples, homelands that were invaded and colonised by European nations over recent centuries. The subsequent suppression and cessation of Indigenous landscape management has had profound social and environmental impacts. The Black Summer bushfires have brought Indigenous cultural burning practices to the forefront as a potential management tool for mitigating climate-driven catastrophic bushfires in Australia. Here, we highlight new research that clearly demonstrates that Indigenous fire management in Southeast Australia produced radically different landscapes and fire regimes than what is presently considered “natural”. We highlight some barriers to the return of Indigenous fire management to Southeast Australian landscapes. We argue that to ade...