5 April 2004

A free seminar at Charles Darwin University on Wednesday questions the belief that contemporary fire management practices in the Top End mirror Indigenous practices.

“Recent studies indicate that traditional Indigenous fire management practices actually prevented the establishment of tall grasses and remove the need for frequent early dry season burn offs,” said Professor David Bowman, Director of the Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management at Charles Darwin University.

Professor Bowman will present the findings of his research landscape-scale analysis of Indigenous fire management in central Arnhem Land as part of the Key Centre’s 2004 free seminar series.

“While early dry season burning provides one of the few contemporary options to control fires once heavy grass fuel loads have become established, it is misleading to say this practice reflects traditional Indigenous burning practices.

“As part of my investigations, satellite imagery and field inspections were used to determine patterns of landscape burning in eucalypt forests and woodlands,” said Professor Bowman.

“This showed that Indigenous burning practices created a fine-scale mosaic of burnt and unburnt areas. It did not support the assumption that Indigenous burning is focused primarily in the early dry season – an assumption that is currently used to advocate large scale, frequent, early dry season burning.

“Comparative studies further indicated that while fire is common in the wooded forests under both Indigenous and European management, a key difference in the Indigenous managed areas was the absence of the dense cover of tall grasses.

“This suggests that skilful fire management by Indigenous people avoids the proliferation of tall grass understoreys that occurs under the cycle of contemporary fire management methods.

“In essence, maintenance of traditional fire management regimes wherever possible should be a high priority given the difficulty to control high grass fuel loads encouraged by very frequent burning.