Can fire be good for the environment?
This question is place specific. Fire in one place and habitat type may good for some plants and animals but not others. Also, the size and intensity of fire determine its overall impact.
Managing fire is complex and should be done in consultation with experts, researchers and local stakeholders. But, here is an example of where fire is used to care for nature.
On the eastern border of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory lies the 1.4 million-hectare Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area. Covering large parts of the Arnhem Land Plateau stone country, the IPA is home to 116 plants and 20 animals that occur nowhere else in the world.
Arnhem Land Plateau stone country is also home to the Arnhem Shrubland Complex, a threatened ecological community that provides habitat for iconic and threatened animals like the black wallaroo, Leichhardt's grasshopper, northern quoll, Oenpelli python and white-throated grass-wren.
This habitat, as the name suggests, doesn't support many large trees. Instead, the community is made up of what are called ''resprouter shrubs'' and ''obligate seeder shrubs''.
Resprouter shrubs regrow from roots, trunks, and branches after a fire, and obligate seeders are plants that have seeds that grow after a fire. It's the obligate seeders that are really under threat. Essentially, this plant community has evolved to suit a specific fire regime; one that needs people.
Across the outback, fewer people are living on country, actively caring for it with traditional fire management. Traditionally, the Nawarddeken people of the Arnhem Plateau would start small cool fires in the early dry season. This created a mosaic of small patches of burnt and unburnt country, and helped prevent annual large, late dry season wildfires that are ignited by lightning during September to December.
These large wildfires really affect obligate seeders because, while the seeds can grow after a fire, the parent plant often dies. This means that if the country isn't rested and protected from yearly hot wildfires, obligate seeder plants do not have time to produce seeds before the next fire. Without the obligate seeders, the structure of the ecological community changes and animals from neighbouring unburnt areas are unable to establish in the newly burnt areas.
This is where the Warddeken Indigenous rangers come in. The rangers have reintroduced a fire regime that incorporates traditional knowledge with modern techniques. Mimicking the traditional patchwork burning of the past, the rangers' work significantly reduces the number of late season wildfires and allows the obligate seeders in the Arnhem Shrubland Complex to grow and go to seed before another fire.
This world-class fire management from the rangers will protect the Arnhem Shrubland Complex and its many threatened plants and animals for years to come.
Response by: Andy Leach, Fuzzy Logic presenter and campaign officer for Country Needs People.
