Mountain Journal

The following is from a piece by well known naturalist Bob McDonald, and taken from the ABCs ‘Drum Unleashed’ website.

Australia and Victoria in particular have been labelled among the most bushfire-prone areas of the world.

Before any analysis of the causes of the 2009 Black Saturday fires, the assumption was made publicly that the “lack of fuel reduction burning” was the “cause” of this catastrophe.

By implication it must have been Aboriginal people who burned the bush continually to maintain low fuel low loads. But did they? Just published research evaluated fire frequency using charcoal occurrence from more than 200 sites in Australasia over 70,000 years – concentrated around south-east Australia. It tells a completely different story. The results reveal how dramatic the increase in fire in the Australian mainland landscape has been since Europeans.

The full article can be found here.