Much of the justification of land managers using fire as a tool comes from our perception of how Australian first nations people carried out “Cultural Burning” and then how our ancestors tamed the land we now occupy. Over time (only 200 years), the local European interpretation of indigenous fire management has been bastardised to a point of justification for desertification in the name of prescribed, fuel reduction, hazard reduction, invasive species management or controlled burns.
Desertification comes in many forms, and in our RegenRegion with it’s “non brittle” (hard to kill) environment it may be incremental and not be as obvious in brittle, drier environments. It’s still a degenerative process. Less and less is created with each event until eventually, there’s nothing. We aren’t immune here, in fact because we started with “more”, our actions may be having a larger effect than in brittle areas that start with less.
Regenerative Agricultural learnings via Natural Sequence Farming or Holistic Management all make the point that valuable accumulated nutrition all plants supply to landscapes is largely vaporized and removed from the land as a result of burning. 99% of it anyway- literally up in smoke. To make matters worse, sterilisation of soil microbiome occurs as the fragile ecosystem in our valuable top-soil is heated, denuded then must recover back to it’s pre-burnt state without soil armor. Lower succession plants take the place of higher ones and the downwards spiral begins. Fire is the same (maybe worse) as spraying or tillage.
But what of biodiversity? We are often burning to manage “invasive species” like lantana after all, so aren’t we improving biodiversity and protecting it from “megafires” by burning regularly? Well apparently not. Biodiversity impacts of the 2019-2020 Australian Megafires, Driscoll et al.* explores this. Obviously megafires are catastrophic however the astounding finding of this report was that areas where ongoing prescribed burning had occurred prior, had worse biodiversity outcomes from the megafires than areas that didn’t.
Yes that’s right, the negative effect of the megafires in terms of recovery time and impact were fewer in “non managed” areas than where frequent burning had taken place. In addition, in the areas where ongoing prescribed burning had been carried out, biodiversity loss was far higher – up to 90%!
An ABC radio interview** Dr. Driscoll said of his findings (almost apologetically) “Weather conditions not fuel load are what makes Megafires”.
The report released only last month makes sobering reading for anyone who still thought fire had a place in landscape management. 40 years of data supported the findings across multiple sites in high rainfall, near-coastal, mountainous areas (similar to ours). It is a gamechanger for the way we manage fire and manage land in our region and everyone should be reassessing.
Dr. Driscoll said in the interview**, “We are getting a false sense of security from prescribed burning activities”.
An alternative approach could be to build moisture in our environment. Add hydration structures and layers of green vegetation that engage the small water cycle and quells fire. In the same way that burning creates an environment for plants that like to be burnt, moisture creates an environment for plants who thrive there. These plants don’t burn well. We live in a high rainfall area so what can we do to keep moisture in our landscapes longer?
Even though this groundbreaking study should change entirely our approach, as non-indigenous land managers we are protective of our cultural burning practices! Prior to machinery and later chemistry; fire (and the axe) was the main tool that enabled colonisation and the introduction of European style agriculture into vast tracts of Australia. We’ve held on to the belief that if we continue to burn, we manage fire risk ignoring the laws of succession that the plants that regrow the best after a fire event are the ones that enjoy those conditions. In short, fire creates fire.
*The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08174-6
*The video: https://youtu.be/kCPjowmxH3Q
*The conversation: https://theconversation.com/catastrophic-declines-massive-data-haul-reveals-why-so-many-plants-and-animals-suffer-after-fire-241691
Cover photo courtesy of https://iptc.org/
Article by Tim Scott – first published in Gympie Living Magazine
