Using fire to mitigate climate change, practice culture, and conserve habitat
Historically, Indigenous Australians would burn the landscape as part of their traditional cultural practices. Fire was a way of connecting to the land, a tool for hunting and cooking, and part of a broader regime of landscape management to protect culturally and ecologically important sites. Burning was often conducted in a patchwork fashion, with ‘paddocks’ created by strategically placed firebreaks that prevented wildfires from spreading into key areas of Country. After European colonisation, traditional fire management practices declined and wildfire outbreaks, ignited by lightning, began occurring much later in the dry season.Managed fires conducted in the early dry season reduce the frequency, intensity and extent of large-scale fires in the late dry season. This is because fires burn cooler earlier in the year when there is a higher water content in the ‘fuel load’ (leaves and detritus) compared with later in the season. By shifting when burning takes place, the intensity of fires is reduced, which also reduces the release of greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxides.
Scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions have caused global temperatures to rise by 1.2 degrees Celsius since 1990, and temperatures are continuing to rise. In Arnhem Land, this means increasingly more days over 35 degrees Celsius, which contributes to heat stress for humans, plants and animals. Sea levels in the Top End are also rising at more than double the global average, turning freshwater floodplains into saltwater and changing rainfall patterns. Climate change is a lived reality here.Fires produce around 50 per cent of the Northern Territory’s overall emissions, primarily due to large-scale late-season fires, whereas early-season fires reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 52 per cent. Early burning also helps to protect the flora and fauna of Arnhem Land from wildfires.Across northern Australia, more than 23 million hectares of savanna woodland is burned in a managed way every year. The resulting reduction in emissions is then quantified and sold through the Climate Solutions Fund (a carbon market run by the Australian Government) or alternatively on the voluntary market. Ranger groups can sell carbon credits for a financial return on these markets, helping fund fire management activities.
