Living with climate change is nothing new for Indigenous Australians, who survived tens of thousands of years in this continent with wild swings of dry, wet and sea levels many tens of metres lower than today. Clearly current fire management regimes are inadequate. But is there an alternative, asks ranger and landcare officer, Greg Watts?
The ground rules for fire management are already changing. The Australian Greenhouse Office tells us that by 2050 SE NSW will become hotter, drier, windier, and stormier. Periods of drought will be more frequent. Days of Very High and Extreme Fire Danger will become more frequent. As a result there will be increased bushfire frequency, a significant decrease in inter-fire period, increased fire intensity, reduced fire extinguishments, longer fire-fighting campaigns (picture, above, courtesy Departmentof Environment and Climate Change) and significant increases in annual burnt area.
Despite the reluctance of many bureaucrats to address global warming issues, I believe we will be faced with many climate-induced challenges in bush fire management over the next few decades. The traditional owners of this country have been dealing with these challenges for thousands of years, and by looking at their burning practices we can develop strategies that will allow us to meet fire management challenges in a warming world.
At the time of first contact with traditional Indigenous owners in SE NSW in the late 1700s it is estimated that there was a population of 4,000 – 5,000 Aborigines living on the south coast and Monaro. These people were largely nomadic, moving across the country following the seasonality, range, abundance, accessibility and predictability of food resources.
Using archaeological evidence we can map the movement of Indigenous people across the landscape in SE NSW. Archaeological evidence indicates most of the people lived on the coast over spring and summer “from until the sally wattle blooms until the big flies come” in clan groups of 20 – 30 people. In autumn and winter smaller family and clan groups moved inland along rivers in search of food. Fire and use of fire was an integral part of the inhabited landscape.
Within 30 years of European contact the Indigenous population of SE NSW had declined to just 500 people on the coast and 120 on the Monaro. Smallpox, syphilis, influenza, abduction, and massacre had severely dented the local population, particularly the weaker young and knowledge-holding elders.
Settlement by squatters dispossessed traditional owners from their lands and cut traditional movement paths across the landscape. European land use methods were introduced into the landscape. As a result, the traditional burning practices that had been practiced across SE Australia for 5,000 years or more were changed forever.
But have these new farming, land use and fire management techniques reduced fires? In SE NSW, despite our best efforts, landscape-scale fires have occurred at approximate 20 year intervals in 1896, 1914, 1939, 1952, 1968, 1980, 2001, 2003, and 2006. Since 1990 the interval between these mega-fires is decreasing.
As a way of managing the increased threat of bushfire in a warming world I am proposing that we return to an Indigenous burning model. The basis of the model is that where there was Indigenous habitation there would have been relatively frequent burning. Where there was little or no Indigenous habitation there would have been a relatively infrequent ‘natural’ burning regime.
Within the homelands 5,000 ignitions (80 small fires per 100 hectares) would occur over the burning season. Temporally and spatially this would translate to a small fire every three days over a number of ridges in the burn area. At least half of any clan estate would be burnt in any one burning season using lots of little one day fires a hectare or two in size over the six month burning season. The outcome would be a traditional pattern of relatively small, typically low intensity fires, set on to vegetation as soon as it cured sufficiently, employed progressively and systematically over the burning season.
Perhaps we should look again at such a system of hazard reduction burning?
SOME DETAIL:
INDIGENOUS BURNING PRESCRIPTION
Based on literature review and anecdotal information a burning prescription was developed for Indigenous Fire Management Zones.
Where
• Burning is associated with people. Burning radiated out from the campsites and trails.
• Men’s fires on ridgetops earlier in the season. Women’s fires were in creekline areas later in season. Fires progressed downslope. Employed progressively and systematically across the clan area.
• Homelands were regularly burnt. Areas between homelands (20 – 100 km apart) were infrequently burnt.
• There was a focus on small areas that could be readily managed, and identifying areas that could be safely left for burning later in the season.
Who
• Under the guidance of elders
• Division of labour by gender. Men burnt earlier in the season with larger hunting fires on ridgetops. Women’s hunting fires relatively small, low intensity, and later in the season.
• A collective exercise, directed by the clan elders and related men through patrifiliation, and men from adjacent clans related through matrifiliation – giving a reciprocity of responsibility between clan groups and involves neighbours who are also kin. Burning arrangements discussed /planned with kin groups
What
• A relatively high frequency of burning of coastal and sub-coastal vegetation types, and along rivers. Relatively infrequent burning of inland vegetation except for around campsites, ceremonial sites, and along trails.
• Burning would be frequent (every 1-2 years) around campsites and hunting/gathering areas along the coast and hinterland. 3000 hectare (5km x 6km) blocks around camp sites. 5000 ignition points (80 fires / 100 hectares) within block spaced temporally and spatially over the burning season. At least half of any one clan estate may be burnt in any one season.
• Pathways along rivers and ridges would be frequently burnt (every 1-5 years) along these paths.
• Burn immediate areas around ceremonial sites at 1-5 year intervals.
• Remaining areas not burned, so there would be large areas of hinterland that remain unburned between wildfire events.
• Burn ridges first, then gullies as conditions dried. Strategically prepared firebreaks burnt earlier in the season to prevent the spread of later fires
• Use fire to promote specific economies and meet specific objectives within the block.
When
• Use of natural signs to commence burning season in Mid-March to July.
• Fires lit when they were known to burn out in the cool, dewy night-time conditions
• Hunting fires maybe every 3 days over the burning season
• Burning creeklines done later in season was only done where areas were protected by this earlier extensive ridgetop burning
• There was a 5-year cycle of burning on favoured hunting and foraging grounds
• When the grass is cured, the gullies are wet and the nights cool
READING THE SIGNS
If you lit a fire it was good to know when that fire would go out. Again, natural signs were used to plan ignition (pers. comm. Fran Bodkin).
• Burn after the first rains after the Lilly Pilly fruits (March – October)
• Kookaburra calls in the middle of the day = rain is 4 days away
• Crows flying high = rain 3 days away
• Pair of cockatoos flying = rain is 2 days away
• Magpie changes call = rain 1 day away
On the Day
• Drop dry grass from shoulder height. If it lands more than 1 pace away it is too windy.
• Always burn down hill
• Always have wind blowing across ridges, not up and down gullies
• Always light from ridgetop
Mound Ants (medium size black ants with earth mound nest about a metre diameter) are a good indicator for the coming season
• Mound ants place sticks on their nest to insulate against hot weather in summer. When they remove the sticks the hot weather is finished – this is an indicator that the burning season is imminent.
• Mound ants place stones on their nests in winter. Black stones absorb heat indicating it will be a severe, cold winter. Brown stones indicate it will be a mild winter. White stones indicate it will be a warm winter suitable for burning.
Acacia decurrens
• Heavy flowering indicates a severe fire season within 18 months. Ensure all your burning is completed within that 18 month period.
• Flowering indicates there will be no more frosts.
Gum-barked trees
• Shedding bark indicates the bush fire season is over
• Thick new bark indicates a severe fire season is imminent
• Bare ground under a eucalypt indicates viable seed and a regenerating year. Do not burn.
This is interesting stuff especially the predictors. We live in one (aren’t they all?) of the most bushfire -prone areas of Australia so bushfires at any time of the year are never far from our mind.
Being involved in the local CFA helps us to be aware of the risks & actions we can take but I think we have a lot to learn from people who have been managing our hot dry country for a very long time.
Fascinating reading. I would like to know/understand the source of this information. I am concerned about adopting pre-invasion Aboriginal fire regimes, because the landscape now is so different as a result of 200 years of intensive settlement, agriculture and other industry. We also have a much larger population now and the smoke generated by the fire regimes described above would not be tolerated by most city dwellers.
I also have reservations about the extent of burning by Aborigines, particularly on the east coast. How would the rich heathland communities with species such as Banksia ericifolia have survieied with fire frquensies of 5 years or less? This banksia doesn’t produce fertile seed until plants are 6 years old and they only regenerate from seed. As I say a fascinating topic, for which there are no simple solutions, but the Greg Watt’s thesis is worthy of discussion.
Thanks for your feedback on the article.
Re: the source of the information – there are a number of acknowledgements…
The quest began at Greencape Lighthouse where I was caretaking a few years ago. A guest was doing yoga on the front lawn as a pod of whales cruised by. She was upside down in a yoga pose and asked “have you ever looked at the world from the whale’s perspective?” I thought about that for a while and realised that from a whale’s perspective we are really just artefacts on the surface of the earth, dangling in space.
Shortly after this I was in the W.A. Art Gallery in Perth looking at an Indigenous painting of a bottle tree that appeared to be upside down with its root system in the air and realised that from an Indigenous perspective it is all about our relationship with the soil and not the ‘artefacts’ that are above it, and if we look at Indigenous burning practices we would get a better handle on using fire to care for the land.
So began the quest. The information has been sourced from a number of viewpoints. Fran Bodkin from the Mt Annan Botanic Garden at Sydney was inspirational in the quest for indigenous fire knowledge, is an Indigenous Knowledge keeper for her people and provided much of the anecdotal information. There’s lots more that she couldn’t tell me as an uninitiated person. I’ve also had interesting conversations with a number of scientists who are working with Indigenous communities across Australia to gain a contemporary knowledge of traditional Indigenous burning practices.
As stated in the article, burning knowledge was passed from clan to clan via patrifiliation and marriage, so I believe the traditional knowledge of the fire management basics was widespread – you can pick this up by reading researched prescriptions from different parts of the country that show similar patterns of fire management behaviour.
I’ve spoken to a number of traditional owners in the south-east about movement patterns of people through the region prior to european settlement. (An interesting aside to this was the discovery of an outlier of macrozamias (burrawang – a traditional food source) at Belowra, a traditional camp site on one of the movement paths, and the question as to whether these had been planted i.e. was it agriculture to provide a seasonal food source for travellers).
I also looked through most of the landscape art works that I could find from the first 100 years of european settlement to get a visual on what the landscape was like as these early european settlers moved through it, and how it changed under their influence.
By putting all these information sources together I’ve come up with the Indigenous burning model for the south-east.
Re: the extent of burning…
I believe that where there were people there was frequent use of fire. Where there were no people there was infrequent ‘natural’ fire on roughly a 20 year drought cycle. Where the people were there was maybe 80 small hunting fires of around a hectare in size for every 100 hectares, lit from March to July. This would have mainly been along the coast, up along the rivers and along traditional movement paths in the hinterland.
If you look at the habitation patterns there would have been large (c. 20,000 hectare) areas between the inhabited areas, including a diversity of vegetation communities, that would have had a ‘natural’ fire regime.
Approximately 50% of the land area in the south-east remains forested under State Forest and National Park land tenure, where these fire regimes could easily be applied. There will always be land management conflict at the urban interface where most of the asset protection from bushfires occurs.
The idea seems to have great merit but try getting that level of detail and frequency of burning through a bureaucracy that is chronically under resourced and burdened with OH&S and proedural madness. It’s probably still doable but the system needs to be freed up more so that managers can manage. Risk averse bureaucracies will find this a big challenge. Whavetver, it’s still an advance on the socalled “local knowledge” which applied by Europans over the past 200 years has resulted in disaster; multiple extinctions, deforestation, massive erosion and a river system resembling drains.
We, in Dharawal lands recognised that each landscape has its own spirit, perhaps you would call it characteristic – heathland, particularly Banksia heathland was rarely burned any more often than a Mudong Cycle, which is about 12 years, whilst grassland needed burning more often. The signs for burning were multiple, activity of the birds, numbers and species of insects, sound of the bush as the wind blows, all were taken into consideration – remembering that our reasons for burning were also multiple, for production of food, for safety, for prevention of wildfires, etc. However, we had, and still have (at least where we are allowed to go), an intimate knowledge of our bushland, and its moods and its songs.
Did anybody see Wilson Tucky’s take on what caused the Victorian bush fires on SBS TV this evening.
Yes, you guessed it….. it was those bloody pesky Labour greenies and the establishment of the nature reserves across the country.
Onya Wil, ol mate.
Hi Fran
Great to hear your Dharawal Elders wisdom again.
It was James’ SMH article on you and indigenous weather cycles that started all this! …and how true have your forecasts been!
How can we get your wisdom imparted to the Victorian bushfire enquiries?
Maybe applying indigenous knowledge in a modern context is the answer…
“It was April and the Aborigines in a remote part of Northern Australia asked their elder if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild.
Since he was an elder in a modern community he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky he couldn’t tell what the winter was going to be like.
Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his people that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the clan should collect firewood to be prepared.
But being a practical leader, after several days he had an idea.
He walked out to the telephone booth on the highway, called the Bureau of Meteorology and asked, ‘Is the coming winter in this area going to be cold?’
The meteorologist responded, ‘It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold.’
So the elder went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared.
A week later he called the Bureau of Meteorology again. ‘Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?’
The meteorologist again replied, ‘Yes, it’s going to be a very cold winter.’
The elder again went back to his community and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find.
Two weeks later the elder called the Bureau again. ‘Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ the man replied. ‘It’s looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters ever.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ the elder asked.
The weatherman replied, ‘Our satellites have reported that the Aborigines in the north are collecting firewood like crazy, and that’s always a sure sign.’
Hi Greg and, of course, James,
We are still using the indigenous fire knowledge, particularly in our own homelands here. Many years ago, when I was much younger, one of my teams underwent bushfire training with our local Rural Fire Service captain. We exchanged knowledge with him and he and his men actually adopted the methods, using the bush indicators. He retired shortly afterwards, and I met him again only this year, and with a big grin he said “It really worked, you know, we should learn more from you guys.”
One of the things that has really worried me, is the lack of detailed knowledge of what is out there, ready to burn when a wildfire comes through. For instance, we avoided burning anywhere, if we could help it, near certain kinds of trees or shrubs because their vapour causes disorientation or other kinds of illness, sometimes death (we used this knowledge on our enemies when they came into our country).
So much of our country here in Dharawal lands is water catchment, national parks or other crown lands, and therefore it is easy to use our knowledge of the plants and animals as indicators. But other areas are more altered, and there are other introduced plants which can also be horribly dangerous when burned, for instance, the Robinia. Knowledge of such plants and their locations are needed for our firefighters to survive when a wildfire comes through.
We need to work together.