Pilot program using ancient cultural burning technique

February 26, 2024 6:45 PM

Pilot program using ancient cultural burning technique to prepare for future bushfires in NSW. Residents on NSW's South Coast were trapped with nowhere to flee to but the beach when Black Summer bushfires advanced on their towns, but a new cultural burning program aims to keep key roads open during emergencies.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (6 comments total)

This is really cool.

I would need to go hunting for it but I have also seen an article about a similar program happening in Texas with local native groups in East Texas taking control of fire management in one of their traditional areas. They do traditional controlled burns and are hoping to stave off major fires, which are also a big issue in the US.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:14 PM on February 26

Steffensen, V. (2020). Fire country: how Indigenous fire management could help save Australia.

2page book review
posted by infini at 1:49 AM on February 27

Nice to see this! This is starting to happen in California as well. Indigenous people basically tended the entire continent of north America for thousands of years in a variety of ways. The "untouched" nature that colonizers saw when they came here was actually more akin to a giant garden that had been tended and taken care of for a long time. Its nice to see some of this returning, and much needed. Check out some more resources here here and here. Both California and Australia have a fire adapted/dependent ecosystem, so I hope that at some point all these groups get together and share knowledge.
posted by stilgar at 6:45 AM on February 27

Back in my anthropology major days I took a cultural ecology course and for one class watched a documentary about cultural burning in the northern areas of Canada's prairie provinces. If I remember it right, government had banned the practice (in the 1920s or 30s) and this led to brush, and other fire fuel, build up, which in turn led to more frequent and worse forest fires (by the 1950s or 60s). Finally, during the 1970s limited amounts of burnings were permitted again and the wildfire problem was significantly reduced.

So, a year or two back when I read about how forest fire problems in British Columbia were causing a bit of a rethink when it came to cultural burning, my brain just exploded with thoughts along the lines of, "jayzeesfukkncrisco, I thought we already re-learned this lesson!" Because I took that course around 1990 and my impression was that the documentary was from the 1960s or 70s.

Okay, so I couldn't find the documentary, but I think this 1979 made one must have come from the same milieu and thinking: Fires of Spring.
posted by house-goblin at 9:56 AM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Sincerely hoping this gets traction where I live. The 2019-2020 fire season was a literal nightmare.
posted by ninazer0 at 2:53 PM on February 27

Thanks for posting. I know of some people who farm in Northern NSW who practice these methods, twice now fires have come through and destroyed much of the district and neighbouring farms and literally gone right around this property. Meanwhile the neighbours are like 'fucking hippies'.

Listen to Earth and learn or be continually burned, it's funny that so much of the world prefers to do the latter.
posted by unearthed at 6:22 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]