Securing our Future by Looking to the Past: Time to Take Aboriginal Land Management Seriously.
At a time where conserving our environment is more crucial than ever before, perhaps accepting some advice from the people who managed to conserve it impeccably for more than 40 000 years is not such a bad idea.
Thomas Mitchell, one of Australia’s earliest surveyors, famously described the pre-colonial continent as reminiscent of an “extensive park”. Referring to the vast open plains ornamented with trees that made up much of the country.
Unbeknown to him, what he was describing was not the result of undisturbed natural processes but rather the product of thousands of years of meticulous land management by Australia’s indigenous population.
Cultural Burns?
For millennia, Australia’s Aboriginals have utilised a number of techniques to help them gather food, improve soil quality and reduce the hazard of bushfires.
Cultural burns as they are commonly known, use small cool burning fires over extended periods of time to slowly but continuously burn shrubs and grasses. They differ from modern hazard reduction techniques in that they are not purely focused on protecting property but rather on creating more fire-resistant and functional ecosystems.
Through their deep encyclopaedic knowledge of the local environment, local tribes would harness fires to rejuvenate and replenish the land and ensure bountiful food all year round.
Why Do We Need Them Now?
Bushfires continue to increase power and occurrence around the world, fuelled by climate change and centuries of improper land use. Most recently we saw fires in Siberia that were so large they accelerated the melting of ice caps in the Artic.
We have been back burning and using other fire hazard techniques for close to a century in Australia and it is becoming increasingly apparent that these methods are short-sighted and are no longer enough.
The massive amount of CO2 released in these fire events only adds to the existential problem of climate change meaning innovative and out of the box solutions are needed now more than ever before.
Ancient Solution backed by Modern Research
Australia is blessed to have a unique solution to this growing issue. One that has been tried and tested for thousands of years and continues to garner the support of the scientific community.
A study conducted by the federal government in conjunction with the CSIRO and Landcare Australia found that traditional land management had a number of benefits on both the environment and local community.
This included the revitalisation of local flora and fauna, improved soil quality, local employment opportunities, beautification of the landscape and reduced wildfires.
On the Fish River Station in the Northern Territory, the use of cultural burning was found to have reduced the area of land that had been historically burnt each year by late dry-season wildfires from 69% to 3%.
A study conducted by Stanford University also found similar results. By analysing a number of satellite-images, the Stanford team found that aboriginal cultural burning in Martu tribal land in Western Australia had moulded the land into a patchwork of spaced vegetation that radically reduced bushfires whilst simultaneously increasing biodiversity.
Cultural burning in Tathra NSW has also been reported to have reduced bushfires whilst creating many employment opportunities for local indigenous people.
Moving Beyond the Barriers
Of course, cultural burning is not without its limitations. The land around Australia has been heavily altered and degraded over the last two centuries and in many places, modern ‘hot flame’ back burning is still required to ensure the safety of property and people.
Furthermore, substantial investment, planning and support is needed to record and amplify the local knowledge and techniques required to implement cultural burns on a large scale.
Currently, a number of initiatives exist that support cultural burning such as the Indigenous Protected Area Program and the NPWS Cultural Fire Management Policy. However, these initiatives are largely focused on encouraging aboriginal people to engage in cultural burns on aboriginal land.
No policy currently exists, neither at the national or state level, that legitimizes and emphasises cultural burning as an integral part of an overall fire management plan.
Nevertheless, perhaps the biggest hindrance of the uptake of these techniques in our official bushfire strategy is the unwillingness of Australian society to value aboriginal teachings as relevant and important to the modern world.
At a time where conserving our environment is more crucial than ever before, perhaps accepting some advice from the people who managed to conserve it impeccably for more than 40 000 years is not such a bad idea.
