> "It's the concept of maintaining country - central to everything we do as Aboriginal people. It's about what we can give back to country; not just what we can take from it."
On top of this, this year's conditions are nothing like the "natural" burning of Australian forests. The fires are burning hotter and faster due to the dry conditions.
A massive part of Australian forests have already burned too, they don't regrow out of nothing, and they are the only thing keeping deserts at bay in many cases.
In general a lot of Australian forest does need to burn, we know this. Record drought and record high temperatures over the past few years created the catastrophic fire conditions we have seen this year. Controlled burns cannot be carried out when conditions are dry and hot - the fire gets out of control. Thus there have been very few burns of this nature over the last several years.
Climate change means it's getting more and more difficult to carry out these type of controlled burns for forest management in general. Our fire seasons are longer, hotter, drier and more dangerous, and these types of burns can and do get out of control.
The purpose of a controlled burn is to remove underbrush and create gaps that an uncontrolled fire could not cross, right? Wouldn't it be possible to archive those goals without fire? (e.g. just going through the forest and clearing underbrush manually)
Of course some fires are still needed, e.g. to trigger fire-dependant seeds.
I dont have the citation offhand but some of the recent fires have simply ‘jumped’ firebreaks and cleared areas as well. Add to that the natural firebreaks of damp/wet forest lands going up like we saw in QLD.
[+] [-] rayiner|6 years ago|reply
Aboriginal practices should not be romanticized. There is evidence that it actually had severe environmental impacts, in particular shortening Australia's monsoon season and lengthen the dry season: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/06/did-australian-abori.... There is also evidence that they caused the extinction of the Australian megafauna: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-humans-climate-australian-mega....
[+] [-] GarrickDrgn|6 years ago|reply
A massive part of Australian forests have already burned too, they don't regrow out of nothing, and they are the only thing keeping deserts at bay in many cases.
[+] [-] lukevdp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jozzas|6 years ago|reply
Climate change means it's getting more and more difficult to carry out these type of controlled burns for forest management in general. Our fire seasons are longer, hotter, drier and more dangerous, and these types of burns can and do get out of control.
[+] [-] xg15|6 years ago|reply
Of course some fires are still needed, e.g. to trigger fire-dependant seeds.
[+] [-] donavanm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rafaelvasco|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carolina_33|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColanR|6 years ago|reply