Anthony Moore 153588 CRS100 Major

What are the alternatives?

In Australia, the most relevant alternative to the traditions of western fire management is clearly the indigenous tradition. In some parts of northern Australia indigenous fire management has continued relatively unbroken for thousands of years (Morris 1996). As such, traditional fire management in these areas has been quite well described.

In the seasonal high rainfall savanna areas burning generally began as early as possible following the wet season, with higher, drier areas burned first, along with margins of monsoon forest to create a fire break protection against later, high intensity fires. Fire continued to be applied as the landscape dried through the dry season, culminating in the burning of floodplains and along creek lines late in the year (Whitehead et al. 2003). As a result, landscapes were a mosaic of areas at different stages of regeneration, the majority having being burnt at least once within a 2-3 year period (Morris 1996).

Under this regime, there is little opportunity for the build-up of dead organic matter required to fuel extremely high intensity fires. Indeed, the seasonal climate of the tropics dictates that exclusion of fire is not an option; the rapidly growing grasses of the wet season quickly dry out to fuel the fires of the dry season, starting either by anthropogenic ignition or lightning. Indigenous people do not add fire to the tropical landscapes but simply alter the timing of when it occurs (Morris 1996).

A large proportion of land in Australia’s savannas and semi-arid regions is owned and managed by indigenous people now largely living in widely separated towns and communities. It has been suggested that if effective, quality fire management is to be applied across these regions, people must return to live on the land (Yibarbuk 1998). This suggestion also reflects a contrast between the practical application of knowledge in western and indigenous knowledge systems. In western culture, fire management is generally undertaken only by officially trained experts, while for indigenous lands, the responsibility is considered to lie with the entire community – if this community were well distributed then group-based participation could greatly improve fire management (Berkes 1998).

In fact, traditional indigenous burning was not limited to the tropical north. There are strong indications that the Eucalypt forests of eastern Australia were far less dense at the time to European colonisation and the cessation of traditional fire management led to rapid changes in vegetation communities (Jurskis 2005). Increasingly, western science shows agreement with the traditional practices, with prescribed burns widely utilised in these forests to reduce the risk of extreme wildfires (Penman et al. 2007).