Maybe I have been a bit harsh with my title for this post? Then again, I am, after all, at heart, a global warming skeptic.
And now the NT government is proposing aboriginals stop burning-off to reduce C02 emmissions.
“Government figures show the Territory has Australia’s highest rate of emissions per person. The service’s hazard reduction officer, Patrick Skewes, says Indigenous land owners and communities need to change the way they use fire.
“They need to understand the damage that they’re doing too and that’s an educational program,” he said. “Just because you’ve had a bad habit for 100 years doesn’t mean to say that it’s a good thing … bad habits become cultural as well.”
Would this be a good outcome for the NT environment? Is there too much burning-off in the NT?
At this blog David Ward from WA has suggested:
“By insisting, through our political representatives, that CALM burn the bush more often, and more patchily, we will make it safer, see more wildflowers, avoid most animal deaths, and avoid dense, choking smoke from fierce wildfires. We will have to live with occasional light smoke from prescribed burns. If most litter were less than five years old, smoke would be minimal, and arson would be futile. All it could cause would be a mild, creeping fire, which would benefit the bush.
Think of the savings and benefits by working with nature, instead of fighting it. No more squadrons of aircraft, anxious home owners, and choking smoke for a week or more. The police could get on with catching burglars. More young Noongar people should be employed by CALM to help manage the bush with fire, restoring their culture and healing their self esteem.”
Read Ward’s entire post at http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000672.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Delegating burning to CALM might have mixed blessings, but as some one who lived at the Top End, controlled burning rather than anarchic burning, which is the traditional way, might overall be better.
But CALM is at the mercy of the Greenies, so this change in policy may well result in some unwanted disasters.
As for the link to global warming, that is nothing but a mindless bureaucratic justification and politically expedient.
The problem is that we introduced cattle – and their feedstock is profoundly affected by burning. Traditional owners seem blissfully unaware of this “problem”.
My money is on the Aborigines.
Surely that depends on funding.
I’ve got it…Aboriginal burning caused the Medieval Warm Period. They were secretly funded, of course, by the right-wing Vintners Guild of London, who wanted to grow grapes in England, so they could drown Dukes in vats of Malmsey. The Greenland Viking settlers kicked in a few krone too.
But the Aborigines got a bit too enthusiastic, and their smoke blotted out the sun, causing the Little Ice Age, when the River Thames froze, and oxen were roasted thereon. The poor old Greenlanders froze and starved, and even the horns dropped off their helmets.
The Vintners and Greenlanders withdrew funding, but the Aborigines enjoyed burning so much they continued. They also found it increased their food supply, and made the bush safer. Smoke assumed an important spiritual significance for them, and fire had an important connection with land ownership.
Should I pass this important new information on to the Northern Territory Government environmental think-tank? Anybody got their email address?
Touch’e David Ward!
I think a simple explanation is that it is not ‘if’ the land is burned but ‘when’.
Controlled and calculated burning regimes have, as David suggests, been implemented in the Australian landscape for 40,000 years. To call this a ‘bad habit’ which has generated in the past ‘100 years’ is ludicrous.
Sadly this is the logic and clear thinking which currently dictates landuse managment in Australia.
Tom, and others, may be interested in the fascinating similarities between Australian Aboriginal burning and that by hunter gatherers in other parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, and Europe.
For America, an excellent list of references has been created by Dr. Gerry Williams of the USDA Forest Service – he mentions other distinguished fire history scholars such as Prof. Steven Pyne and Prof. Hank Lewis. I suggest the NT Government environmental think tank should visit http://www.wildlandfire.com/docs/biblio_indianfire.htm – happy reading!
If I may have another bite at the cherry, there is a very interesting map, showing the contrasting fire mosaic north and south of the US/Mexico border, in California. South of the border, I understand that few fires are suppressed, and consequently few large fires occur, since they run into recently burnt areas, North of the border, US fire fighters attack with water bombers, fire trucks, helicopters etc. When a fire does get away, it is large and dangerous, due to the greater extent of heavy fuel.
It would be interesting to know how these contrasting fire mosaics measure up for conservation of native plants and animals, not to mention human safety.
The paper is ‘An Integrated Model of Two Fire Regimes’, by Richard A. Minnich, Conservation Biology Vol.15, No. 6, Dec 2001. It can be seen at: http://nature.berkeley.edu/stephens-lab/Minnich.pdf
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So far not one Aborigine has expressed fear that global warming is a problem. Not one tribe is saying..oh gee, it’s gettin too hot for us now, we gotta move south. And I wonder which culture lives in the hottest parts of the country. I wonder which culture would be the first to know global warming had arrived. Believe it, those guys know about climate cycles. Ask them. We won’t ask them, because we don’t want to hear the truth. Global warming is not an issue for anyone except politicians wanting to get kickbacks from certain energy suppliers and wanting to impose carbon taxes. It’s also an issue for the gullible, because we the non-indigenous know zilch about the land and the climate. Forget the BoM. Go ask the Abos.