According to a new study, changes that occurred in Australia’s forests during the era of British colonial rule made the country more prone to forest and bush fires.
The University of Melbourne study, published in the journal Nature, revealed the vegetation, fire and erosion history of Croajingolong National Park in East Gippsland over the past thousand years. According to the findings, when colonization, which began in 1788, brought an end to Indigenous communities’ cultural burning practice, eucalyptus cover increased 4-fold and open land turned into dense forest, causing flammable material to accumulate. By examining charcoal remains in lake sediments, researchers determined that the cool cultural burns of the pre-colonial period gave way to hot forest fires. Study author Michael-Shawn Fletcher emphasized that this change took place before climate change. Gunaikurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett said that reviving the cultural burning tradition known as “towera” would reduce fire risk.
Why it matters
While forest fires in Australia have long been debated primarily through the lens of climate change, this study shows that the problem has a land management dimension that predates climate. The findings reveal that fighting fires is not only a matter of suppression capacity, but also of how vegetation is managed. This framework takes the cultural burning knowledge that Indigenous communities have practiced for centuries and turns it from a marginal topic in environmental policy into a potential solution tool. The research directly concerns fire management units, forest policy decision-makers, and Indigenous communities waiting for their traditional practices to be included in official programs. On the other hand, questions remain open as to how far data based on a single national park can be applied across the country and how cultural burning can be integrated into modern fire management.
Background
Australia is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 3 news stories mentioning this name in the last 90 days; the most recent is dated September 24, 2026.