Reducing fire risks in Northern Australia, New Paper

Northern Australia contains the largest intact savanna woodland in the world. It was managed over thousands of years by Aboriginal people, who used fire for ceremony and for hunting and resulted in the creation of patchy, complex and diverse habitat. As Indigenous peoples have been moved off the land, traditional burning practices with small, patchy dry season burning have been interrupted. The result is a build up of fuel and larger, more intense wild fires late in the dry season. Now, massive swaths of land burn every year, devastating the landscape.  This has negative consequences for the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released, and for biodiversity.  And if the current situation is allowed to continue, it is foreseeable that climate change combined with other factors such as high biomass invasive grasses could result in fire regimes that change the structure of the savannas.

A recent project aims to return the northern Australian savannas to traditional fire regimes, achieving emissions reductions, and positive biodiversity and social outcomes. TNC is partnering with key Indigenous land management groups, government agencies and scientists to assist in creating markets which would see payments from carbon emitters go towards Indigenous communities to undertake and in many cases re-introduce traditional fire management practices.

New paper:

Insights into the biodiversity and social benchmarking components of the Northern Australian fire management and carbon abatement programmes

A recently published paper by staff of TNC Australia and key partner organisations outlines some of the thinking behind the biodiversity and social benchmarking components of the fire/carbon abatement program for Australia’s northern savannas. 

TNC has contributed to both assisting the development of and funding for a number of benchmarking activities in this program. 

The article appeared in a special issue of the journal Ecological Management & Restoration which was co-sponsored by TNC Australia (with generous support of The Thomas Foundation) and focuses on Indigenous land management in Australia. 

The special issue is open access and available online at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/emr.2012.13.issue-1/issuetoc

 

 

 

 

 

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