Study links Australia's wildfire risk to colonial land-use change

Research published in Nature on 7 October 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, according to Phys.org. The work was carried out by University of Melbourne researchers in collaboration with Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation. Lead author Michael-Shawn Fletcher, a University of Melbourne professor, said the research provides scientific evidence for the value of cultural burning and the need to integrate Indigenous knowledge into contemporary fire management strategies.

The researchers found that colonization drove cascading changes: increased fire temperature, a fourfold increase in eucalypt cover, transformation from an open woodland to forest, and increased soil erosion. Infrared analysis of charcoal preserved in the sediments revealed past fire temperatures, showing the cool cultural fires of the precolonial period being replaced by hot wildfires after colonization. The study states that the transformations to the land predate human-driven climate change, and that the current vulnerability of southeastern Australian eucalypt forests to wildfire is strongly influenced by colonial land-use legacies.

Fletcher said: "When Country is cared for, climate does not dictate wildfire." He said Gunaikurnai people cared for Country in what is now Croajingolong National Park through cultural burning for thousands of years, keeping much of the landscape as open woodland. He said climate records show seasons of comparably dangerous fire weather, such as those seen during Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday, recurred in the region repeatedly before colonization, yet the open landscape maintained by cultural burning protected the land from catastrophic fire.

Fletcher said most discussion of Australia's wildfire crisis stops at climate change, and that the work shows what set the stage for it, describing forest expansion and thickening that loaded the landscape before the climate began to shift. The paper concludes that restoring cultural burning and supporting Traditional Owners to care for Country is an essential component of mitigating wildfire risk.

GunaiKurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett, from Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation, said Gunaikurnai Ancestors were born with towera (fire), which was interwoven with the Old People's practical daily life on country. "Not treating country with towera, country becomes extremely dangerous for GunaiKurnai, animals and plants," Mullett said. He said studies such as this provide firm scientific evidence to support towera land management initiatives for country.

According to Phys.org, the study also addresses a larger cultural point about the concept of wilderness, which the article describes as a powerful cultural and environmental idea describing land largely untouched by humans. The article states that Croajingolong National Park has long been treated as pristine wilderness.