This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Research published today in Nature by University of Melbourne researchers, in collaboration with Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation, 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. 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.
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. "When Country is cared for, climate does not dictate wildfire," Fletcher said. "For thousands of years, Gunaikurnai people cared for Country in what is now Croajingolong National Park through cultural burning, keeping much of the landscape as open woodland.
"Climate records show that 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. "When colonization ended that care, the forest expanded and thickened across the region, loading the landscape with fuel. It is that transformation that has handed control of fire to climate." The research found that the transformations to the land predate human-driven climate change, demonstrating that the current vulnerability of southeastern Australian eucalypt forests to wildfire is strongly influenced by colonial land-use legacies.
"Most discussion of Australia's wildfire crisis stops at climate change. Our work shows what set the stage for it—forest expansion and thickening that loaded the landscape long before the climate began to shift," Fletcher, from the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said. Reading the lake sediment record, researchers found that the hot fires came first, driving a fourfold surge in eucalypts that thickened the once-open woodland into forest and loaded the landscape with fuel.
Infrared analysis of charcoal preserved in the sediments reveals past fire temperatures, showing the cool cultural fires of the precolonial period being replaced by hot wildfires after colonization. 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. "Studies such as this provide firm scientific evidence to support towera land management initiatives for country." The study also addresses a larger cultural point about the concept of wilderness—a powerful cultural and environmental idea describing land largely untouched by humans. "Croajingolong National Park has long been treated as pristine wilderness, yet it is now one of the most fire-prone and repeatedly burned parts of southeastern Australia," Fletcher said.
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