Australia's Wildfire Crisis Linked to Colonial Land-Use Change
Researchers say 800 years of cultural burning kept forests open before colonisation thickened shrubs and nearly quadrupled eucalypt cover, raising wildfire risk.
- On Thursday, the University of Melbourne published a study finding that British colonization, rather than climate change alone, loaded southeastern Australian forests with fuel, creating a 'catastrophic fire loop.'
- Before colonization, frequent, low-temperature cultural burning by Indigenous communities kept land as open woodland for over 800 years, preventing the forest thickening that followed.
- Gunaikurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett said his ancestors used 'towera' as practical daily life on country, stating, 'Not treating country with towera, country becomes extremely dangerous for Gunaikurnai, animals and plants.'
- The reprieves between bushfires have collapsed from roughly 40 years in the late 1800s to about five years in the most recent decade, fueling the 'catastrophic fire loop.'
- Lead author Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher emphasizes that restoring cultural burning practices and supporting Traditional Owners to lead fire management is essential to breaking the 'catastrophic fire loop' plaguing southeastern Australia.
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Australia's wildfire crisis linked to colonial land-use change
Research published today in Nature by University of Melbourne researchers, in collaboration with Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation, reconstructed the past 1,000 years of vegetation, fire and erosion in Croajingolong National Park in East Gippsland, one of southeastern Australia's most fire-prone forests.
Colonisation, not climate change, first primed these forests to burn
Darrian Traynor, Getty Bushfire season is here. The Bureau of Meteorology expects the declared El Niño to be strong to very strong. Southeastern Australia is bracing for a long run of dangerous fire weather. Weather is only part of a catastrophic fire. Another factor is fuel – combustible vegetation. Our new research, published today, shows the current fuel load in some Australian forests is not “natural”. It is a product of colonisation, which …
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