More than 600 Indigenous participants across 25 Aboriginal desert ranger teams have carried out controlled burns across an area of more than four times the size of the UK ahead of a brutal dry period. There are already signs the program is working.
By PAUL GARVEY September 18
The world’s biggest Indigenous fires program has already helped mitigate major blazes across Northern and Central Australia, ahead of what is shaping as a particularly severe fire season.
More than 600 Indigenous participants across 25 Aboriginal desert ranger teams have together carried out controlled burns of more than 2.3 million hectares of spinifex grassland over the past 18 months, across an area of more than four times the size of the United Kingdom.
The program, co-ordinated by the Indigenous Desert Alliance, is believed to be the biggest of its kind anywhere in the world.
The fires, which have taken place during the cooler northern months, aim to develop mosaic burn patterns across remote stretches of desert in a replication of the Indigenous burn patterns that were used across much of Australia for thousands of years. The smaller fires are designed to deliver biodiversity benefits, reduce the amount of available fuel and create fire breaks for the larger uncontrolled fires that can sweep through during the hotter months.
There are already signs that the program is working. A massive 150km-long bushfire raged to the east of Tennant Creek last week in an area that had not been actively managed by any ranger groups, while fires that started around the same time in nearby areas that were part of the fire program around the same time did not take hold.
The completion of the program is particularly timely, given the forecast for the upcoming fire season. The Spring bushfire outlook recently released by the National Council for Fire and Emergency Services warned that more than three-quarters of the Northern Territory was at an increased risk of fire.
Boyd Elston, a regional land management co-ordinator at the Central Land Council and a co-chair of the Indigenous Desert Alliance, told The Australian that the controlled burns under the latest program were already having a clear impact.
Record controlled burns ready north for brutal fire season
There are already signs that the program is working. A massive 150km-long bushfire raged to the east of Tennant Creek last week in an area that had not been actively managed by any ranger groups, while fires that started around the same time in nearby areas that were part of the fire program around the same time did not take hold.
The completion of the program is particularly timely, given the forecast for the upcoming fire season. The Spring bushfire outlook recently released by the National Council for Fire and Emergency Services warned that more than three-quarters of the Northern Territory was at an increased risk of fire.
Boyd Elston, a regional land management co-ordinator at the Central Land Council and a co-chair of the Indigenous Desert Alliance, told The Australian that the controlled burns under the latest program were already having a clear impact.
“By looking at the mapping we use to track fires, you can see that these fires have run into the scars that have been created by this project. They are acting as speed bumps to stop the fire from getting out of control and burning through the whole desert,” he said.
While many ranger groups have carried out controlled burns in the past, they have largely been restricted to limited easy-to-access areas. The Indigenous Desert Alliance has used a $3 million Federal grant to help different ranger groups travel by helicopter and plane to get into deeper country that was otherwise largely inaccessible.
“To get the scale of burning that we’ve been able to get done has been great,” Mr Elston said.
The burn program aims to improve biodiversity by ensuring a mix of old and new vegetation across the deserts.
Many native species thrive where there is a mix of grasses, flowers and seeds from new growth and shelter from old growth, but large-scale uncontrolled fires can ruin that balance.
Gareth Catt, the desert partnerships manager at the Indigenous Desert Alliance, said many native species had disappeared from areas where cultural burning practices had stopped.
“Areas that are consumed by very large fires, the intensity of that can be enough to degrade the seed bank completely and burn through the old growth hollow-bearing trees, which are a really important shelter for wildlife,” he said.
“It has a very destructive effect broadly across the landscape if fire is allowed to run unchecked. By making a choice about putting fire into the landscape and diversifying the landscape, you increase the diversity but also buffer and mitigate against the impact of broadscale wildfire.”
Mr Catt said he hoped the early signs of the program’s benefits would help attract more funding to keep the program running.
“We‘re hopeful that we can get some grant funding in but at this stage there’s no single commitment to continue this program at a broad scale,” he said.
“Without that ongoing engagement with the landscape and stewardship of country from Indigenous rangers, we will see the return of some of the largest wildfires in the world across the Australian desert that go largely unseen but have a huge impact on the natural and cultural values.”