Indigenous cultural burning had less impact than wildfire on the threatened Backwater grevillea (

Abstract

Indigenous self-determination, land rights and caring for Country programs are enabling Indigenous peoples across the world to re-establish customary roles in biodiversity conservation and cultural fire management. In Australia, Indigenous-controlled lands form the majority of the protected area estate, harbour almost 60% of listed threatened species and maintain high levels of biodiversity. This study used cross-cultural (Indigenous and Western academic) methods to monitor the impact of Indigenous cultural burning v. wildfire on the threatened plant, Backwater grevillea (Grevillea scortechinii subsp. sarmentosa). Cultural burning resulted in lower mature grevillea mortality and less impact on reproductive output than wildfire. Both fires stimulated a mass germination but the cultural burn preserved a multi-aged population while the wildfire killed 99.6% of mature shrubs. Comparison of fuel load changes resulting from cultural burning, hazard reduction burning and wildfire indicated that fuel loads were reduced by all fire treatments, although the cultural burn was less severe than other fires. Our case study of the Backwater grevillea and its Banbai custodians provides an example where Indigenous rangers have adopted a plant into their cultural management framework. They are conserving this threatened species using culturally driven, holistic management that is locally focused and supported by cross-cultural knowledge.

Anthropogenic fire practices only ‘best’ if they promote a large seed buildup: comment on the conservation needs of a fire-killed grevillea

“…The upper curve is the sum of these (A + B) and gives net population size. Consistent withMcKemey et al (2021), seedling numbers double as population age (fire interval) doubles and the broken lines approximate the % area burnt by the three types of fire. Note that fire interval has a far greater impact on population size than the type of fire once 50% area burnt is reached.…”

“…1. Had a comprehensive population dynamic approach as I advocate here been adopted by McKemey et al (2021), there would have been no need for conjecture on these points.…”

“…Perhaps the fuel load had even reduced somewhat, short-lived shrubs having long since senesced and decomposed (Zylstra 2018), over what would usually be regarded by fire managers as an extremely long period? And hazard-reduction fires may fail their purpose in the face of intense wildfires (Bradstock et al 1998) as noted in McKemey et al (2021). Other solutions may be needed to address the challenge of species conservation, where fires that burn 80% of the ground cover at intervals in the order of multiple decades and out-of-phase over the landscape are shown (in the case of this grevillea) to be optimal, versus the need to safeguard human welfare that such a preferred fire regime might imply.…”

“…Data availability. All data used here for Figs 1, 2 were abstracted from McKemey et al (2021), or were of a hypothetical nature only, as retrievable from Fig. 3.…”

Response to ‘Fire practices only ‘best’ if they promote a large seed buildup: comment on the conservation needs of a fire-killed grevillea’ (Lamont 2022)

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Lamont (2022) re-assessed our data (McKemey et al 2021b) related to the population dynamics of Grevillea scortechinii subsp. sarmentosa, in response to different types of fire.

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