Bushfires: Ancient wisdom helps Kimberley rangers manage risk

Land managers around the country should look to the success of ­indigenous fire control measures in the Kimberley.

Kimberley Land Council acting CEO Tyronne Garstone says indigenous rangers have cut wildfires by half using traditional land-management techniques. Picture: Supplied

Land managers around the country should look to the success of ­indigenous fire control measures across 420,000km of Kimberley savanna lands for clues on how to better alleviate the risk of catastrophic bushfires, according to the Kimberley Land Council.

The Kimberley Land Council said indigenous land managers across Northern Australia had achieved a 50 per cent reduction in extreme fires within four years.

It said this success should earn them a place in the national discussions about fire mitigation following the east coast bushfires.

Extreme bushfires that have traditionally ravaged the Kimberley and its wildlife have been cut by half, after decades of bushfires burning uncontrollably across vast areas of savanna grasslands, sometimes for many weeks.

Ngurrara fire ranger Emily Lenmardi. Picture: Supplied

Traditional fire management techniques have been rolled out by 16 ranger groups in the Kimberley, based firmly on a return to elders’ knowledge of landscape and seasonal conditions.

The council’s acting chief executive, Tyronne Garstone, said more than 100 full and part-time indigenous rangers conducted mosaic burns on foot and by helicopter in a program that contributed about $10m to community coffers from income gained under the Emissions Reduction Fund.

“We have a look, read the country, and say ‘OK those plants are coming out, the wind’s blowing in this direction’,” he said.

“It’s about mosaic burning at the right time, in the cooler months when foliage is still green.

“And it’s carving pathways through an area, rather than burning everything.”

Savanna burning projects registered under the ERF have contributed about 10 per cent of Australia’s total carbon abatement under the scheme to date.

Indigenous-owned projects account for 50 per cent of this figure, abating more than 830,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases from 2012 to 2018.

Kimberley rangers actively manage fire risk on 90 per cent of the region’s native title lands, using traditional techniques and detailed satellite mapping. The ­accredited fire regime is part of an International Savanna Fire Management Initiative.

The initiative, backed by the federal government, did a three-year, $3m assessment of whether traditional fire management techniques could be exported to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

It concluded they were globally applicable for predicted increases in bushfires, but required testing.

Mr Garstone said the transferable nature of the Kimberley fire regime was demonstrated when the Savanna Fire Management ­Initiative sent a group of KLC rangers to Botswana last March to demonstrate traditional burning to African rangers in their savanna grasslands.

“They had dozens of people lighting up and then running around trying to put the fires out,” he said. “We had five rangers walking calmly through the bush doing cool burns.”

He said indigenous rangers were in a unique position to help form part of a viable climate change strategy to manage the ­increasing risk of bushfires. The council is calling for a permanent indigenous voice at a state and federal level in any future fire planning.

“We’ve had a reduction of wildfires and we’d like to share this knowledge with the rest of Australia,” Mr Garstone said.