Essay by Eric Worrall
There is also colonisation.
Climate change not the only blame for bushfire crisis
By Allanah Sciberras
Updated October 8 2026 – 5:03am, first published 5:00amRestoring Indigenous cultural burning could help break a “catastrophic fire loop”, plaguing Australia’s southeast forests, a new study has found.
Researchers reconstructed the past millennium of vegetation, fire and erosion in Victoria’s Croajingolong National Park in East Gippsland, one of the most fire-prone forests.
The study published on Thursday by the University of Melbourne, found long-term environmental shifts should not be blamed on climate change alone, with the crisis linked to colonial land use.
“Climate records show that seasons of comparably dangerous fire weather, such as those seen during Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday, occurred in the region repeatedly before colonisation, yet the open landscape maintained by cultural burning protected the land from catastrophic fire,” lead author Michael-Shawn Fletcher said.
“When colonisation 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.”
…
Read more: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9364649/climate-change-not-the-only-blame-for-bushfire-crisis/
The abstract of the study;
- Article
- Published: 07 October 2026
Australia’s current wildfire crisis linked to colonial land-use change
- Michael-Shawn Fletcher,
- Anthony Romano,
- Caitlin O’Shea,
- S. Yoshi Maezumi,
- Harriet Magee,
- Simon Connor,
- Russell Mullett,
- Patricia Menéndez,
- Patricia S. Gadd,
- Michela Mariani,
- Manuel Chevalier &
- Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation
Nature (2026) Cite this article
Abstract
The global wildfire crisis1 is often attributed to climate change, a framing that overlooks crucial historical drivers. Biomes at the forefront of this crisis, such as the temperate eucalypt forests of Australia, have seen alarming increases in large, intense wildfires in recent decades. Yet evidence of how colonial land-use change and the disruption of Indigenous fire use altered vegetation structure and fuel dynamics remains scarce. Here we reconstruct 1,000 years of vegetation and fire change in a temperate eucalypt forest in southeastern Australia. Before the British invasion (from 1788 CE), fire use by the Indigenous Gunaikurnai people maintained stable, open woodlands through frequent, fine-grained, low-temperature cultural burning. Colonial disruption drove cascading changes: increased fire temperature, a fourfold rise in eucalypt cover, a shift from open woodland to forest and increased soil erosion. These transformations preceded anthropogenic warming, indicating that the vulnerability of these forests to wildfire is shaped by colonial land-use legacies. By creating more flammable landscapes, colonial land use amplified the influence of climate change, suggesting a reinforcing feedback (the ‘catastrophic wildfire loop’) in which high-intensity wildfires raise fuel loads and further increase the likelihood of climate-driven fire. Integrating Indigenous knowledge into fire management is therefore essential to restoring resilience and mitigating future wildfire risk.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-11097-z
I doubt the 18th century Aboriginals thought of setting fires as taking care of the land. More likely they thought of setting fires as ideal conditions for a free BBQ where you didn’t have to chase the animals first.
But underneath all the leftist identity politics the recommendation of the study is sensible – enlist green support for fuel load burns before you end up with a LA scale wildfire.
Sadly progress has been slow convincing greens to support sensible forestry policies, even when the advice is loaded with language designed to appeal to green sensibilities.
The absurdity of mostly white “colonists” dictating to aborigines how to manage forests is lost on the anti controlled burn protestors. Chaining themselves to trees to save koalas from a low intensity burn, koalas which get fried to a crisp a few months later in a high intensity fire, seems more their thing.
We are told to use indigenous knowledge in this, that, and the other.
Then we are told to no use indigenous knowledge in these others.
Hmmmm….
If trees are the lungs of the earth, then they shouldn’t smoke.
Seems we are getting to the pointy end of all things indigenous being good.
I’m waiting for the do gooders to insist that we accept the (Oz) Indigenous knowledge associated with alcohol consumption and domestic relationships. I’d like to see that acknowledged at the start of a woke business meeting or AGM, entwined into the verbiage, ensuring the continuing brain drain that is the modern ‘meeting etiquette’.
NOT.
The 1939 Australian wildfires were just as devastating:
https://www.ffm.vic.gov.au/history-and-incidents/black-friday-1939
Black Friday was the culmination of a dry summer following a drought period that lasted several years. As a result, many creeks and rivers had dried up, and people living in Melbourne were under water restrictions. In addition, dry heat and hot winds sapped moisture from the ground, leaving forest floors and the open plains tinder dry.
The fires on Black Friday was also resulted to a combination of human causes. Landowners, graziers, miners, forest workers, and campers either deliberately or carelessly contributed to the 1939 fires by lighting fires before 13 January. The causes included burning off for land clearing and grass growth, lighting campfires, inappropriate sawmill operations, and domestic fires.
Fires initially started as early as December 1938, and the majority had begun in the first week of January 1939. Some fires could not be extinguished, while others were left unattended. High temperatures and strong northerly winds fanned these separate fires. The fires eventually combined and created a massive fire front that swept mainly over the mountain country in the northeast of Victoria and along the coast in the southwest.
I wonder if they sold off the lumber at a big discount
Transported criminal colonists.
Some say it’s not the criminal DNA that causes the rot, it’s the jailer DNA.
The criminals had no choice to go…..
Climate change not the only blame for bushfire crisis There is also colonisation.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Besides Allanah Sciberras it sounds like Eric Worrall is on board with
claiming there’s a bushfire crisis and it’s caused by climate Change.
I thought the image made my point I thought their claim is absurd.
I have some issues I bang away on: Undefined acronyms, people who suggest better ways to emit less CO2, people who buy into the methane is more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat, people who inadvertently buy into the climate crisis, acceleration of sea level rise is way less and nearly zero compared to what we are told, oh yeah it’s the seals not the bears that need the sea ice, and coral reefs live in warm tropical water. Claims of bleaching due to warming water is a real eye-roller. I could go on.
Didn’t look at the image all that much, just the verbiage. “Climate Change shares the blame for bush fires.” is what I got out of it.
“Have there always been bushfires in Australia? Yeah.
“Have they always been this bad?” Difficult for me to say
“Does poor management of the fuel load play a role?” Yeah probably
“Does increasing CO2 play a role?” NO
“Should CO2 cause warming?” Yeah, but difficult to say how much.
“Is warming from CO2 a problem?” No
Climate change not the only blame for bushfire crisis There is also colonisation.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Besides Allanah Sciberras it sounds like Eric Worrall is on board with claiming there’s a bushfire crisis and it’s caused by climate Change.
Well, 1st time around it came up with the “could not load page” message, or something like that. Hmmm. New York, New York* comes to mind. A while back Anthony put up a message that charts graphs & images were taking up too much space, so I stopped using the little [iM] thingy down in the right hand corner of “Post Comment” dialog box and started using a “URL” with an image tag; jpg png etc.
*The city so nice they named it twice.
Australia’s forestry industry has been brought to its knees through Green influence in policy to an extent where Australia needs to import construction timber despite our huge areas of forest. The Greens also convince our state governments to lock up forested areas by classifying them as state and national parks therefore not allowing or severely limiting access to them for recreational purposes. Our parks management no longer ‘manage’ the health of the parks by clearing burns or allowing any significant timber usage. The forests therefore become loaded with fuel due to the eucalyptus tree MO of dropping annual bark and limbs as they grow. The result is huge fires when they do occur with heat so intense everything is turned to ash including the topsoil of the land = wholesale environmental destruction.
Greens are not green at all but rather environmental vandals.
Sadly, this is a true statement.
In addition, in Australia, we have the largest reserves of Uranium in the world.
And no nuclear power industry because of these Greens.
And the micro-nuclear power plants will be coming on sale in the USA in late 2028.
Sader, still – the Greens are the “thought leaders” in the Federal Labour Government in Canberra.
Poor fella, my country.
When in the company of greens, be sure to say, “Shhh, be Soylent greens”
Something useful could be made of them, if only in fiction.
Several authors of this “British invasion” article have non-British looking names. Are they upset that the Brits got there first? Jealousy?
They should realise that their scholarship, no matter how good it might be, immediately gets a different filter by many readers who are proud of their British heritage and its many fine achievements.
The topic of fire in their paper gets little attention because suspicious motives are signalled by the authors.
As one who has long mixed with our Aborigines and dealt in Aboriginal affairs, I simply ask these inexperienced authors for evidence that they are skilled in the actuality of historic Aboriginal fire management. I am not, mainly because the relevant Aborigines left no written records of what they did so there is nothing to learn from their pre-settlent history. What we think we know is all made up by whiteys. Geoff S
My main encounter with aboriginals is most of the time when I got into a bar room brawl with someone in my youth the other party was an aboriginal. But my one surviving uncle is an aboriginal, I used to love staying over at his place, always such an adventure. He worked for the CSIRO for years on a project to try to commercialise native Australian plants, so breakfast was always something weird which he had picked from his extensive garden.
Breakfast…. Herbaceous or other?
Nothing like that, just native food plants being evaluated for commercial potential.
Did you ever follow Les Hiddins – the “Bush Tucker Man”?
I think I watched a few episodes ages ago, enjoyed them from memory.
The date of the title image is significant. After successfully stopping fuel reduction burns in East Gippsland, only months later the bush fires of 2019 burned over 1 million hectares in East Gippsland. That was the last bad fire year in the Gippsland region, it’s been pretty cool and damp in the Summer since then (with the exception of one hot day last summer). Oher areas of Victoria have been hit by large fires since then though, particularly the Grampians fires of last Summer.
Another issue with Victorian fires is the total destruction of the native forest timber industry. This was closed on the false fears that they were cutting down all the trees, it was somewhere around 2% per of the allocated area per year, which was very sustainable. The demise of the forestry industry also means the forest roads are not made or maintained, so fighting fires in these vast areas of bush becomes almost impossible.
“Sadly progress has been slow convincing greens to support sensible forestry policies, even when the advice is loaded with language designed to appeal to green sensibilities.”
This is no reason to not do the right thing. That is like waiting for communists/socialists to jump on the capitalist/free market bandwagon before accepting that free market capitalist systems are the superior choice.
A bunch of green losers chaining themselves to trees really slows down forestry work, and makes it difficult to cover all the land which needs a fuel load burn off. People tend to get shouty and excitable when you set the fire anyway without first clearing out all the protestors.
Is that televised or only available on subscription?
I imagine the protestors will self-clear when the fire gets close enough!
They need to learn that you cannot appeal to the common sense of greens. They are devoid of common sense, most of them (particularly the senior ones) don’t even care about the environment. It’s about power. Power for powers sake, in the Orwellian sense. They are not honest players and cannot be reasoned or bargained with.
It’s a funny old world.
Until recently, the complaint was that there had been too much land cleared for grazing and cropping, and too many native trees cut down 🙂
Both can be true. Although it seems now that schemes to re-cover parts of Australia with trees is ongoing whilst existing forestry management is a matter of partisan logjam.
Of course the green academics knew better than a people who had managed the land for at least ten thousand years.
Will anybody now deduce that those academics actually know nothing? I don’t hold my breath.
West Australia had a much stronger fuel control policy in the late 90’s where CALM (State Department of Conservation and Land Management) were being screamed at for “forestry management by flame-thrower”. But I haven’t heard of any major fires in WA for many years.
Friends from just north of Perth told me about a big fire in the late 80’s (I think) and maybe that is what triggered creating CALM in the first place. There was also a lot of research on the need for smoke in germinating some native seeds. I remember there was even talk of selling water with smoke bubbled through it as product to get your seeds growing, but maybe that was a bit pie in the sky.
I haven’t been to Perth for a while – can anyone update me on the policy in CALM now?