Study finds Indigenous cultural burning could curb Australia’s catastrophic fire cycle
A University of Melbourne study has found that restoring Indigenous cultural burning practices could help break Australia's "catastrophic fire loop" affecting southeast forests. The research, sparked by the Black Summer fires of 2019-20 which burned 1.5 million hectares in Victoria, shows that colonisation's end to traditional land management allowed forests to thicken dangerously, loading landscapes with fuel and handing fire control to climate factors.
Researchers reconstructed a thousand years of vegetation, fire and erosion patterns in Croajingolong National Park in East Gippsland. The study found that whilst dangerous fire seasons occurred before colonisation, Indigenous cultural burning kept landscapes open and protected. Lead author Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher explained that when British colonisers removed Aboriginal people from country, the fire regime changed—shrubs increased, eucalypt recruitment thickened, creating a self-perpetuating cycle now driven by climate. The research, conducted with Aboriginal communities, concludes that supporting Traditional Owners to manage country through cultural burning is essential to mitigating fire risk going forward.
- Indigenous cultural burning kept pre-colonial forests open and fire-safe
- Colonisation ended these practices, thickening forests and creating catastrophic fire risk
- Restoring traditional land management is key to breaking the cycle
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Australia's forests in the southeast face increasingly severe wildfires that damage communities and ecosystems. Indigenous cultural burning—a traditional land management practice used by Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years before colonisation—is being examined as a potential way to reduce fire risk. The practice involved carefully timed, controlled burning to keep landscapes open and prevent dangerous buildup of dead wood and vegetation.
For thousands of years, Aboriginal peoples regularly used this burning to manage their lands before British colonisation in the late 1700s. When colonisers arrived, they removed Indigenous people from country and stopped these traditional practices. Without this regular burning, forests became denser with more shrubs and young trees.
This denser forest creates conditions where wildfires burn more intensely and spread more easily, contributing to the severe fire seasons Australia now experiences. Researchers have begun studying whether reintroducing Indigenous burning practices could help break this dangerous cycle. These discussions involve Aboriginal communities and Indigenous land managers who retain knowledge of these traditional practices.
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The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Indigenous cultural burning maintained fire-resilient landscapes for centuries, with the study providing a thousand-year historical foundation for this practice. Colonisation's abrupt removal of Aboriginal land management directly caused the dangerous fuel accumulation now driving catastrophic fires, making restoration both scientifically validated and ethically essential. Supporting Traditional Owners to manage country through cultural burning addresses the root cause rather than symptoms. This represents proper recognition of Indigenous expertise and environmental stewardship developed over millennia.
The case against
Whilst the research has merit, significant practical questions remain about whether cultural burning alone can address modern fire crises. Pre-colonisation climates were substantially different from today's unprecedented warmth, and the study examines one location's patterns across historical timescales rather than proving scalability across diverse regions under current conditions. Implementation requires years to rebuild expertise and capacity at a time when fire risk is immediate. A comprehensive fire management approach integrating cultural burning with modern techniques may be more realistic than treating historical practices as the primary solution to climate-driven fire disasters.
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Originally published by Daily Mail as “Professor blames colonisation for Australia’s bushfires – as he reveals Indigenous solution to stopping them”.