A recent article in The Conversation, “Colonisation, not climate change, first primed these forests to burn,” claims that changing forest management practices, or lack thereof, are primarily responsible for Australian wildfires getting out of control, and climate change is only part of the equation. This is true, at least in some respects. Low-intensity controlled burns and timber harvesting can prevent more intense fires from being able to get started, and many indigenous people frequently burned landscapes to improve hunting grounds. This is true of European cultures as well, however, and the framing of this article makes the mistake of forwarding well-meaning but still racist “noble savage” tropes.
The post authors, researchers from the University of Melbourne along with an Aboriginal “Traditional Custodian,” correctly state that “weather is only part of a catastrophic fire.”
They emphasize fuel load as a major component that contributes to out of control, devastating wildfires. Their research focused on the evidence of more frequent, low-intensity fires occurring in the ancient past of Australia, which suddenly stop after British colonization of the continent. They assert that “current fuel load” in Australian forests is due to human intervention, in this case because controlled burning was discontinued after the Aboriginal people were displaced.
The authors “found that for more than 800 years, frequent, low-temperature cultural burning under GunaiKurnai care held this land as stable, open woodland,” and after colonization, “[h]ot fire becomes dominant, shrubs thicken, eucalypt cover surges to nearly four times pre-colonial levels, and open woodland becomes today’s flammable forest.”
They still make nods towards what they call “human-driven climate change,” but acknowledge that it “did not start this vulnerability – it amplifies one that colonisation began.”
There are a few angles at work here, but first I will note that they are correct that controlled burning reduces fuel load and thus makes it harder for very hot fires to get started.
A major mistake of environmentalists of the past several decades was to stop timber harvesting and deadfall clearing, and limit even low intensity natural burns. Climate Realism explains how in posts about California, Texas, and Canada, among others. Environmental goals, like saving the Spotted Owl for instance, seen in Figure 1 below, led to the building up of burnable fuel that can explode into intense wildfires when an arsonist or lightning strikes.
Incorrect in the Conversation piece, however, is the assertion that climate change is making wildfires worse at all. The data simply do not show it, satellite data show that global wildfire occurrence has been on a downward trend for decades. (See Figure 2 below)
Similarly, data show that Australian wildfires are also becoming smaller since peaking in the 1970s, there is no trend towards more or worse drought. If anything, as pointed out in “Climate Blame for Australian Wildfires Ages Poorly, as Rainfall Remains Abundant,” precipitation seems to be improving for the continent since the droughts of the mid-twentieth century.
The authors are probably right that when the previous owners of the land, Aborigines, were pushed out, the land management practices changed. It’s not clear from the article whether the researchers determined with certainty that the frequent low-intensity fires were directed by Aborigines, or just at times allowed to burn when they started naturally.
Their solution is that “Traditional Owners” – that is to say, Aborigines—must be “resourced” so they can restore “healthy Country and cultural burning.”
They do not explain how Aboriginal “cultural burning” is better than normal controlled burning that is done in other parts of the world, one suspects that it is not very different.
Ancient Europeans practiced forest and moorland management as well, thinning forests via logging and controlled burns on the moors were practiced by the British. It is nonsense to imply that white settlers were unaware that these methods helped to maintain healthy woodlands. It is a sort of “noble savage” fallacy being pushed here, that native people were living in harmony with nature, and not constantly battling it, compared to the foolish nature-hating Europeans. Controlled or cultural burning is not, definitionally, living in harmony with nature. It is aggressive management and shaping the land to your own wants and needs, and the Aborigines themselves know this, as they say in the article, “wild Country is sick Country.”
Today, you can’t blame wildfires in Australia on British colonists; a better argument can be made that progressive environmentalists are the ones currently responsible.
It is good that The Conversation allowed any article that explains something as straightforward as the fact that fuel load is more to blame for severe fires than climate change, but it is shameful that it appears the only way this can get published is by making the lede about scolding the British.
