Yesterday morning we learned that a major bushfire was burning out of control in the magnificent Tarkine wilderness in remote north-easternwestern Tasmania, destroying precious, unique rainforest.
To make matters worse, the fire is believed to have been started after a car rolled on the ‘Road to Nowhere’, deliberately lit by the driver to attract attention. In the heat and wind, and under a total fire ban, the fire unsurprisingly rapidly went out of control.
The ‘Road to Nowhere’ should never have been constructed, and was the focus of a major campaign in 1994. The supposed tourist benefits of the road have never eventuated, but the warnings of the risks it would bring tragically have now come to pass.
Christine moved a motion on the issue in the Senate this afternoon, which was voted down by Labor, the Coalition and Family First. You can read the motion here.
Perhaps some good can come of this, and the road be finally closed and converted to a walking track.
A very uncontroversial motion, I can’t understand why it would’ve been voted down. Unless, that is, that the other parties are ideologically opposed to the putting out of bushfires and the conversion of useless roads to useful bike tracks.
To be fair, calling for the road to be closed isn’t that uncontroversial in the Tas context, Sam. Sadly it’s one of those issues that the major parties will close ranks over.
I am somewhat surprised, though, that Fielding opposed it, since he’s trying to do the green makeover at the moment…
But it’s a road to nowhere!
Apparently formal motions are highly subject to conservative thinking. Pity they aren’t subject to precautionary thinking.
Actually the Tarkine is situated in the north west of Tasmania, not the remote north east .come on people don’t you know where this place is. And why is it called REMOTE. is that what you call some place that you can’t access in a 4×4. (heard of walking). Is it any wonder that things like this happen, we can all thank our government for allowing our beautiful tree filled state to slowly be stripped of all its heritage. Just wait until the Tamar valley pulp mill is finished there wont be any forests left to worry about burning…..
Oh dear, what a terribly embarrassing typo. I know exactly where the Tarkine is, and have been there. Bad slip of the fingers on the keys on a busy day.
If this fire was lit by someone trying to attract attention in an emergency, how will walking tracks avoid a similar possibility? Lost or injured bushwalkers may do the same (not to mention clumsy greenies not properly extinguishing their roaches).
I know nothing of the Tarkine; is fire part of the heritage of this forest as it is with all other forests? I have been told (but am still ignorant) that Tasmanian Aboriginal people had different fire regimes to the mainland, but people still lived there for thousands of years.
“Wilderness”, that pristine place untouched by human hands is a post-genocidal colonial myth to describe the overgrown and neglected gardens of the people who used to live there. There contemporary state, including super-fires, is a new thing, a product of the last 200 years of removal of the human species from such ecologies, with little resemblance to its ancient heritage.
It seems to me that bushfires are inevitable in the bush, the only way to deal with them is management, as Aboriginal people did, not avoidance as appears to be the white environmental prescription.
see also “Aborigines and Conservationism. Land Rights and Green Activism Not Necessarily Aligned” by Tyson Yunkaporta.
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/aborigines-and-conservationism-land-rights-and-green-activism-not-necessarily-aligned
The super fires started 40,000 years ago after humans wiped out the Diprotodons.
Australian bushfires weren’t inevitable, they are a creation of man. Marine sediments tell the story of the sudden onset of raging continental super fires (initially worse than now). Its not a new thing and we did it.
Its impossible to reverse now because 40,000 years of the fire cycle has favoured the now dominant species that benefit and induce further fire like limb-dropping eucalypts and species whose seed pods rely on fire to open and many more.
This is one of those critical pathways that is irreversible once embarked on. A bit like climate change is shaping up to be. Taking out keystone species like the large herbivores has caused the whole ecosystem to degrade into a new lesser equilibrium with no way back. Its a unidirectional path just like you can’t unbreak a shattered glass, or unburn a piece of paper.
Perhaps if we flood the (below sea level) lake Eyre with sea water we might make Victorian summers less dry and so somewhat less bush fire inducing. A sad and clumsy step but maybe our best option to reduce the expected damage from increased wild fires due to ever drier Victorian summers caused by climate change. But maybe doing that would make an even bigger mess of things.
Borlung,
Firstly, I dispute Flannery’s megafauna hypothesis and note that he, himself, presents it as a hypothesis, not as a theory and definitely not as fact. Other studies have hypothesised that it was caused by climate change occuring at the time. The truth is we just dont know.
Secondly, consider the consequences of somewhere between 300,000 and 5,000,000 people (the various estimates of the pre 1770 population) having campfires 24 hours a day, every day, providing energy for light, cooking, energy, recreation and ceremony. How would forest litter behave in those circumstances? The super fires of today have never existed before.
p.s.
forgot to mention the seasonal burnings - frequent and segmented slow, cool fires which is a great difference from the intensity of the superfires.
This is a bit like the drugs debate. Harm minimisation strategies such as injecting rooms and controlled burns are better than superfires and HIV/Hep epidemics.
If one looks at a map of the original distribution of the world’s cool temperate rain forests one finds but a narrow strip in North America and southern South America, some dots in Ireland, UK and Norway and strip in Tasmania and New Zealand. Now the tiny bits remaining in tact, as in the Tasmanian Tarkine, is all but all in the whole world. When we talk of protecting the Tarkine we speak not of simpley having more trees freed from destruction in yet another reserve. We speak of valuing extraordinarily rich and beautiful forests of extreme and rare significance. The tripartite dismissal of Christine Milne’s motion in the Senate this week, asking for recognition of this crucial fact, belies that at last we are beginning to see the big picture and our role in the survival of this beautiful fragile stressed out planet.
And by the way fire is not what works to preserve a climax rainforest eco system
Quite right, its hypothesis not fact. Facts are hard to come by!
All we have in this particular debate are hypotheses and your disputing an hypothesis does not serve to falsify it.
What appears to differ is the level of evidence for each hypothesis. It is only on the weight of evidence that a balanced judgment can be made.
There is considerable evidence for hypothesis that the period of super fires began 40,000 years ago. Some of that is already mentioned.
It would be possible to have a healthy debate if there were evidence to support your hypothesis that:
“The super fires of today have never existed before”.
I think such an hypothesis is exceedingly unlikely to hold on many levels.
Just so we aren’t at cross purposes:
1) I agree without reservation that permitting buildup of flammable material is about as dumb as it gets. Such buildup has been directly caused by the environmental movement and it stands as a cautionary tale for would be do-gooder types. The problem is also quite obviously exacerbated by present global climate change.
2) I also agree that that the super fires have an anthropogenic origin.
Where we differ is the kickoff point for the initial root cause and that debate can only be served with evidence such as it is.
I don’t think anyone is in a position to claim any kind of inferred moral superiority with regard to the issue of fires.
I think you are correct to criticise risky management practises, but I don’t think it is proper grist for the other mill.
Helen,
I have no doubt that fire is very destructive to the Tarkine (and many other forests). It is suffering such destruction now. The question is could the present destruction have been minimised through some other fire management regime than at present?
Perhaps the land management regime that existed before the genocide would be very relevant to preserving the forest today.
I am sure the Tarkine is remarkable as an example of cool temperate rainforest but it is also remarkable as a social ecology which seems to have become irrelevent to the botanical identity of the forest.
Just been googling about the Tarkine
“The Tarkine is the largest tract of unprotected wilderness in Tasmania. It also contains the largest rainforest and one of the greatest concentrations of aboriginal sites found in Australia.”
http://www.tarkine.org/index.htm
Just as the spirit of the trees of the tarkine does not live in pictures and labarotory specimens but in a living ecology, so too with Aboriginal culture. The Tarkine’s cultural significance is not because it contains a number of archaological sites but because it developed as an entity with human being in it, it is a social phenomenon, not just a biololgical/geological one.
It is interesting to note there were roads in the Tarkine before the genocide.
“The Parks and Wildlife Service (2000) note that arguably one of the largest and most spectacular examples “of a pebble ‘pathway’ within Tasmania” is also present.”
http://www.tarkine.org/about-tarkine/tarkine-culture.html
Borlung,
Yes, “There were no superfires” could well be over the top, it is just another hypothesis. But the basis of this hypothesis is that the land, and therefore fire, behaves differently when the land is managed from when it is not. The bush has been managed for thousands of years before its recent mismanagement so, it seems to me, the fires would be of a different nature.
I guess living in simple self managed housing that can be easily rebuilt if it is burnt out is a management technique too.
Don’t be too hard on Greenies, they have embraced the bush, they perceive it as an assett and an ally, not an enemy to be overcome as has been the new Australian mode including fire management.
John T,
a temperate rainforest by virtual definition is harmed by fire - if it burns, it is not rainforest species that return, but an entirely different and usually far less diverse ecosystem. I would point to the extant and clear evidence of a continuous use of the Tarkine by Tasmanian Aboriginal tribes and excellent evidence that fire was used very minimally as part of ecological management within the Tarkine, otherwise it wouldn’t be a termperate rainforest- these develop in the absence of fire.
Having worked a fair bit with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land and Sea Council including spending time up at Preminghana, the evidence points to the first Tasmanians not utilising fire in the way that it was in other parts of Tasmania to maintain hunting grounds and favoured game. It’s often forgotten that parts of the Tarkine are large coastal grasslands / herb fields maintained through grazing by native marsupials - plenty of game, along with birding, lobster hunting, shell fish gathering and so on.
So in summary, your assumption that the presence of Tasmanian Aborigines in connection with the Tarkine must mean there was some sort of fire regime is almost certainly flat-out wrong. Of note - none of the north-west groups are calling to burn it either.
This is also why borlung’s assertion that “I agree without reservation that permitting buildup of flammable material is about as dumb as it gets.” is also incorrect. In many eucalypt forest types in Australia, fire is a critical part of maintaining the ecosystems, following on from Aboriginal techniques. In a temperate rainforest its the exact opposite - the material isn’t particularly flammable and helps retain moisture and provides nutrients through decomposition back into a typically very poor-nutrient system. Some form of ‘fuel reduction’ would therefore be like knee-capping the whole system, and none of the species present rely on or respond to fire for reproduction.
I’d also note that the roads built by Tasmanian Aborigines - most accurately described as pebble pathways bear absolutely no resemblance to a modern roadway and the significant amount of disturbance it brings. I know which one I’d rather have.
and ps John T - please show some respect and don’t use pejorative terms like “greenies”. It’s unnecessary and undermines your own credibility.
Myriad,
I am sorry if you are offended by the word Greenie. Id do not use it as a put down but a description of a movement that i consider myself to be part of.
However our movement has much to learn from Aboriginal concepts of the environment, we are just getting to know this country for the first time and, because of the genocide, our own new preconceptions of what it is too often informs our relationship with the environment.
Fire is certainly part of the Tarkine reality now, it seems that it is indeed flammable. Prolonged drought is not a new thing and such combustibility is, I’m sure part of its long term cycle and was incorporated into traditional land management practices before the genocide. If the old growth forest has survived fire to this point they must have been doing something right because it is very vulnerable to being wiped out in modern fires.
It is an illusion that Aborigines lived light on the Earth minimising their impact on the environment. They managed it and played their role in its evolution. They lived as part of it, engaged in the very heart of its processes including fire, plant propogation and fertilisation, soil airation, selective clearing and transport routes, waterway management, quarrying, etc. The ecology changed when they left it.
while the construction technique of a pebble pathway is different to a modern road, it is the same function of making the landscape accessible to people, facilitating the movement of people through the bush, instituting human behavior into the landscape and ecology, making the bush livable. Not a visit for a bush walk but a day to day public transport system.
I previously admitted my ignorance of Tasmanian fire management but this does not dismiss in any way the fact that people managed the land rather than protected it as a historical relic. The bush was not a wilderness without society but a thriving metropolis including high density (as well as decentralised) housing, food production and well used transport systems such as paths. The forest environment was the sole resource base for a large population.
I am not calling for more fires for I lack the expertise for such a call. What I am calling for is the re-emergence of Aboriginal land management techniques, which means living in the bush again - Real land rights in the Tarkine as a land management regime.
Conservationists (Greenies) have not embraced the bush as a social ecology. Conservation consciousness is the same perspective as Terra Nullius, there was no society in this landscape.
If we are going to accept that Aboriginal culture and its active engagement in ecological process is a living reality then we must challenge our conservationist (greenie) preceonceptions about what it is that we are protecting, especially in places like Tasmania where the genocide was almost complete. Are we protecting the land and its processes or are we protecting our own colonial notions of wilderness as Terrra Nullius - a tree museum?
Do you know what contemporary Aboriginal Tasmanians want to do with the Tarkine and other Tasmanian “wilderness” areas?
Myriad you misconstrue my words too egregriously for me to be silent.
In my posts I was clear that fire was necessary in current ecosystems. It is no rebuttal at all when you say:
“In many eucalypt forest types in Australia, fire is a critical part of maintaining the ecosystems, following on from Aboriginal techniques”
You don’t support your assertion I am incorrect, all you do is agree with me. I can only conclude you didn’t actually read my posts properly.
It is then completely illogical for you to claim I was against the build up of material that “isn’t particularly flammable”. That is not my view at all.
I have a distinctly different view which is that I am critical of the buildup of material that is flammable. The debate is harmed when participants engage in twisting or putting words into the mouths of others.
Regrettably the desire for brevity interfered with a full specification of what I meant by buildup. Its also a problem that there is a enduring limit on my capacity to perfectly express my thoughts. I can see now I could have added a single word to improve the situation. The missing word is “dangerous”.
In context then this better captures my view:
It is a bad idea to permitting dangerous buildup of flammable material.
This is what John T first pointed out and also what I wanted to communicate my agreement with him.
Finally my observation is John T’s posts (while communicating his passionately held views) overall have a more respectful, humble, gracious and dignified tone than do yours.
You would do better to pay attention to sustaining your own credibility. It doesn’t serve your cause at all when (in comment 15) you try to teach something to John that he quite clearly understands far better than do you.
Hi John,
I’m afraid the term ‘greenie’ here is usually followed or preceded by saliva, insults or worse, so you’ll forgive me if I’d prefer to see it not used, although I thank you for explaining your use of it. Reclaiming insults is usually a good thing to do - I’m a dyke for example - but we’ve got a long way to go down here in Tas before ‘greenie’ is going to get there.
However our movement has much to learn from Aboriginal concepts of the environment, we are just getting to know this country for the first time and, because of the genocide, our own new preconceptions of what it is too often informs our relationship with the environment.
This we’ve talked about before, and I think have strong common agreement on. The challenge in Tasmania in particular is reconstructing that knowledge, because nearly all of it has been lost. The best way we can do that is albeit via science & archeology and contemporary study where possible. For eg there’s a researcher at Uni Tasmania who has done extensive work on the Aboriginal fire regimes of the South-west Wilderness buttongrass plains which is fascinating and directly challenges a common assumption that fire must be kept out of them - however they are an extremely difficult landscape to manage fire in as they are underlain by peat and a misstep can lead to fires that burn for many years, often underground.
.Fire is certainly part of the Tarkine reality now, it seems that it is indeed flammable. Prolonged drought is not a new thing and such combustibility is, I’m sure part of its long term cycle and was incorporated into traditional land management practices before the genocide. If the old growth forest has survived fire to this point they must have been doing something right because it is very vulnerable to being wiped out in modern fires..
I think the critical points here are that we have yet to fully reconstruct the entire Tasmanian Aboriginal fire regime, but we do know that it was largely small-scale low-intensity patch burning in cool months to maintain preferred game habitats. This would have precluded fire being used in temperate rainforests as they require a very hot - and therefore uncontrollable - fire to burn and such mosaic burning as practiced by Tasmanian Aborigines would not have threatened them. The evidence also points to the forests being a completely different set of resources for Tasmanian Aborigines, thus the fire/game scenario was not applied..
.It is an illusion that Aborigines lived light on the Earth minimising their impact on the environment.
Well, sort of. They sure as heck live a lot lighter than us, and of course had far smaller populations -take for instance the highest estimate of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population prior to invasion being no more than 30,000, with most people agreeing it was probably more like 3-5,000.
.while the construction technique of a pebble pathway is different to a modern road, it is the same function of making the landscape accessible to people, facilitating the movement of people through the bush, instituting human behavior into the landscape and ecology, making the bush livable. Not a visit for a bush walk but a day to day public transport system.
Sure, but a few hundred or thousand people moving usually seasonally though an area on foot is very, very different to even only several cars a day on a road that is like a scar. To take just one eg of ecological damage done by roads, a colleague of mine at Uni, Menna Jones, studied the population of quolls in an undisturbed logging area - the provision of a single road saw almost the entire local quoll population killed as a result of the road bisecting their territory and forcing them to cross it, and for whatever reason the quolls were very attracted to the road and unused to cars and trucks.
.The bush was not a wilderness without society but a thriving metropolis including high density (as well as decentralised) housing, food production and well used transport systems such as paths. The forest environment was the sole resource base for a large population.
This isn’t accurate for what we know of Tas. The biggest population densities were along the coasts in the main, and still very low density - a band of up to a hundred at a time for eg. Other environments such as grasslands and coastal heathlands were probably at least if not more important. I think this is in part why we have such extant stands of temperate rainforest down here. The relics we have found suggest they were places of deep spiritual significance although of course many plants etc. were / are of considerable daily benefit and use. It’s unbelievably frustrating and tragic that we’ve lost most of this.
.I am not calling for more fires for I lack the expertise for such a call. What I am calling for is the re-emergence of Aboriginal land management techniques, which means living in the bush again - Real land rights in the Tarkine as a land management regime.
I think this would be great - just been pointing out that in the Tarkine even with full Aboriginal management, fire wouldn’t be a factor, or a very minor one. Unfortunately one of the really big complicators in Tasmania’s northwest is that there is deep conflict between Aboriginal representative groups, as there is a very bitter disagreement around Tasmanian Aboriginality. How to overcome that one I’ve got no idea and like most whites I suspect, I feel the best thing we can do is stay out of it, but it makes it extremely difficult to deal with such proposals as yours.
.Conservationists (Greenies) have not embraced the bush as a social ecology. Conservation consciousness is the same perspective as Terra Nullius, there was no society in this landscape.
That’s undeniable up until say the late 1980s, but things have changed rather a lot since then. Most conservationists I know, while still undoubtedly with a lot to learn, see Aboriginal people as integral to what we do in terms of conservation in this country, although many are unsure how to go forward. Contemporary controversies and politics such as the one eg I give above in Tasmania’s north-west make it seemingly very difficult.
. Are we protecting the land and its processes or are we protecting our own colonial notions of wilderness as Terrra Nullius - a tree museum?
I think the honest answer is a mixture of both. There’s no doubts that areas of surviving and minimally impacted forest have great emotive and often spiritual power for white people. There are many who support conservation from that point of view, and a deep intuitive feeling that humans impacting on such areas when there are so few left is terribly wrong. Then there are others with much more knowledge who understand that landscapes and ecosystems are dynamic and evolving things that humans are integral to. The trick is to separate out that ‘wrongness’ feeling as it relates almost exclusively to western paradigms of ‘land management’ from all humans and all landscapes. We need to put the humans back in without that being an ecological disaster.
.Do you know what contemporary Aboriginal Tasmanians want to do with the Tarkine and other Tasmanian “wilderness” areas?
Views that I know of really range. The northwest as I’ve indicated has some major political issues caught up in it. There’s also strongly divergent views within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community from say Michael Mansell who consistently pushes for the island in toto to be handed back, to those who want much more resourcing and involvement in management. The elephant in the room is the loss of cultural knowledge. If I had a million bucks, I’d give it to documenting as fast and as comprehensively as possible what Tasmanian Aboriginal elders know before they leave us. It’s simply unjust not only that it may well be lost, but that white government expects Tasmanian Aborigines to have an informed and equitable voice in land management when we make no effort to help them secure their own knowledge that we trashed.
Sorry borlong, but even adding the word ‘dangerous’ is quite a simplification, and even your further explanation regarding non flammable material doesn’t make things particularly clear.
What do we mean by ‘dangerous’? Dangerous to humans? For example, wet eucalypt forests naturally build up massive fuel loads, and typically have a burn cycle of around 200-300 years, in which fires are often hot enough to wipe the forest out to ground level and a whole new cycle begins. That sort of fuel load is clearly a perceived danger to humans if they live nearby, but fuel reduction schemes often actually harm the ecology of such wet eucalypt forests immeasurably. A good example can be seen around Hobart where after the devastating 1967 bush fires, authorities and locals alike reduced fuel annually, resulting in massive erosion problems, loss of biodiversity and in reality did little to reduce actual fire risk. This has been demonstrated by the control of fires of equally dangerous potential near Hobart using better techniques and mosaic patch burning on a long-term cycle - much like the Aborigines would have done. But the perception of ‘dangerous’ fuel loads in wet eucalypt forest has been just as harmful as any conservation ethic that the forests should be left untouched.
Then there are eucalypt woodland types of ecosystems that rely on a regular build up of fuel that is then released about every 5-20 years - but again the amount of fuel that accrues in even 7 years is seen as a danger.
So this is why both your statements regarding the build up of fuel are at least simplifications from my knowledge. You also neatly ignored my second sentence which was to point out the context of fire in temperate rainforest, which is actually what this whole thread is about. Many do see the fallen wood etc. in a temperate rainforest as fuel load. I’m glad you don’t.
Hi Myriad,
The environement movement discovered Aboriginal people in the 80s just like the rest of Australia did, and like the rest of Australia our knowledge of Aboriginal things is very limited and largely contained within our own cultural framework. Environmentalists, welfare workers, politicians, artists etc. have created a notion of Aboriginality fasioned in our own image. we have acknowledged the existance of Aboriginality but still have little real knowledge of what it means.
I dispute your population figure, only because I dispute population estimates for the whole of the continent. Banks and Cook said there was a very small population that was dying out. However the first fleet and colony was surprised at the number of people here. They estimated 3,000,000 but London downgraded this to 300,000. The assumption in both estimates was based on the population only living on the coast. The further inland people lived the less food would be which, according to the theory of the time, lead to such things as canibalism to maintain food supplies. However, later. when the frontier moved west they realised that people managed to survive with abundant food from the inland ecology too.
As for How many in Tassie? I dont know. I know the genocide was big and secret so I suspect all estimates are far too low. However a secret factor that covers the mainland also is smallpox which managed to make undiscovered people dissapear as if they never existed. There is a theory, backed by evidence, that there was a major smallpox epidemic prior to the first fleet. Some of the pre-colony mass graves of many people dying at the same time suggests such an epidemic.
In ecological terms it does not matter whether the epidemic was accidental or deliberate, but I say it was deliberate and part of the secret mission of Banks on the Eneavour voyage. (and secretly on Cooks other voyages to the pacific) 20 years later the new colony had to confront a decimated demoralised population rather than the strong resistance the British faced in Africa and America when they colonised there (there is evidence of smallpox as biological warfare in America and both Cook and Banks were there when it was occuring). see - http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/02/27/captain-cook-joseph-banks-and-smallpox/
But ecologically, I suggest the low population in Tassie noted by colonial scribes is considerably lower than its historical population and the scribes did their calculations after or during the mass secret genocide on the Island.
How do you know most people lived on the coast? There is certainly evidence of them living in the forest. Where do your estimates of the numbers of people living in the Tarkine 250 years ago come from?
My guess is that population estimates should be based on the bioregional capacity to sustain humans taking into account long term cycles including extended drought. I have seen bioregionalist greenie (sorry) estimates suggesting this continent can sustain a population of 10,000,000. I make my assesment of the pre-invasion continental population by this.
Such a mode would suggest a considerably larger population for the Tarkine.
Aboriginal culture loves big families, there is an inherent political and economic motivation to size, balanced by a limited ecological capacity to sustain the family. After 60,000 years of sustained population why would the numbers be so low?
Aboriginal culture has a very sophisticated marriage law based on family “skin” or “moity” which ensures the “wrong” people do not marry each other. But even with such sophisticated social and genetic engineering, how would such a small poulation prevent inbreeding, something that would of destroyed the people tens of thousands of years ago. For there to be a surviving population at all indicates a larger genetic baseand cycle than a handfull of small clans.
How do the old knowledge and ecological regimes come back?
While there is an argument that knowledge can emerge as a spiritual revelation from ancestors, for the sake of simplicity I will agree with you that in the Tarkine and many other places that have been genocided, the knowledge is gone. No matter how much research is done on the Tarkine itself the knowledge cannot be found there and I suspect also with today’s elders. However knowledge of indigenous culture and management in other places is a fine teacher, especially when applied to the clues and glimpses that today’s elders do have.
Culturally, the broad brushstrokes of knowledge exist in places like Cape York, Arnhem land, the Kimberlies and much of the central desert, all ecosystems vastly different to Tassie but the cultural essence of relationship to land is still intact and evolved to tackle the political, and ecological changes of the 21st century. Also globally, the experience of Indigenous people still living in their forests, perhaps ecologies closer to Tasmania’s.
But all this exotic knowledge is meaningless unless it is developed as a process of (for example) the Tarkine, A process of experimental learning based on Aboriginal models and paradigms to re-grow the knowledge. of and in a specific place
This is why the conflict between the wilderness society and Cape York traditional owners over the wild rivers legislation is so important nationally. The very place where new modes of ecological management can be created by Aborigines and environmentalists has become an ideological battlefield about what the landscape is. I say the future of proper management of places like the Tarkine is dependent on some of the potential innovations of Cape York. There is much new “research” being done on fire in cape york with scientists following Aboriginal people around as they burn, taking their notes and measurements (described by the Aboriginal people as “following us around like puppy dogs”) as the old burning practices are being revived. This scientific research may well have significance in other places including cold places but the answers will not come from there.
The answers will come from Tasmanian Aboriginal people learning within Aboriginal modes WHY the Cape York, desert, Kimberlie, Arnhem Land people do what they do, what is the essence of their practice. Then this essence, supported by environmentalists* can be applied to the ecological specifics of the Tarkine and the oral tradition of the Tasmanian elders.
*environmentalists, especially the Greens can support this process primarily as political support, helping to provide funding and enabling legislation for such a process to occur, resulting in Aboriginal management of the forest. Environmentalist science and perspective including academic research may well contribute to such a process but the environmentalist paradigm itself also needs to grow and develop in this process, not provide the central framework around which Aboriginal support and consultation can attatch itself.
But environmentalists, including the Greens must have hearts and minds open enough to embrace such a process. If we convince ourselves that the Aboriginal people died out and the knowledge cannot be revived then we only have our colonial notions of the environment to believe in.
The Greens policy supports land rights. This should not mean simply including registered native title holders into boards and committees of colonial management regimes, or to be employed as rangers to implement the colonial regime or even to rename geographic features with Aboriginal words. Land rights in all its cultural depth and complexity must also be applied to places like the Tarkine in the political demands for proper management and recognition of it through such means as world heritage listing etc.
p.s. Myriad,
I suspect you underestimate the humble campfire as a mode that does indeed use fallen wood etc. as a fuel load. if, as I suspect, a lot of people lived in the Tarkine then a lot of campfires burning over a hundred year super-drought cycle would have a considerable impact on a fire in that drought time.
I speak only from the experience of extended camping in the bush. It does not take long before there is no convenient fire wood in your immediate vicinity. The longer you camp the further you have to walk to get wood.
Large numbers of people in decentralised groups, perhaps relocating 2 or 3 time a year along dreaming paths would “clean up” much of the forest litter that over the last 200 years has been left to fuel drought fires such as the recent one.
This thread has become surprisingly heated, good work.
When the continent of Australia was colonised by the first peoples, they encountered true wilderness. True wilderness hasn’t existed in Australia since.
Over the last 20, 50, or 100,000 years these first peoples terraformed the ecology of the continent through their use of fire, through hunter/gatherer activities, and through land management practices that assisted these pursuits (such as expansion of grasslands for hunting, seed planting, etc).
These first peoples had no choice but to adopt fire management practices if they wanted to survive and flourish. With wild fires (whether caused by lightning strikes or started accidentally) they needed to do two things: firstly they needed to survive the fire; and secondly they needed to make sure that they didn’t starve to death afterwards. In areas with high food densities together with wild fire defendable refuges (such as dank gullies) fuel reduction through the collection of firewood should have sufficed for fire management*, and emergency back burns would have been deployed when needed. In areas with low food densities or where natural fire refuges didn’t exist more extensive fire management practices would have been needed, and mosaic style preventative burning is the obvious result. Mosaic burns would have been essential to provide sufficient areas of refuge for the plants and animals so critical to their own survival.
[* I completely agree with John T here, firewood collection should not be under estimated as a fire management tool in areas with high food or people densities.]
Some species of flora and fauna flourished under Aboriginal stewardship, whilst other species became endangered or extinct. Under European stewardship the ecology has seen change too - similarly devastating, but at a much faster pace. We can not go back to “true wilderness”, because we don’t know what that was, because some of the species are now extinct, and because we as a society are not prepared to tolerate “true wilderness” anyway. We are not even prepared to accept what I’ll call “wilderness Mk 2″, land which was once managed by man but which has now been returned to nature and is free of any human intervention whatsoever. No, this “wilderness Mk 2″ we will wish to preserve (which is really an anathema, wilderness and preserve should never been used in the same sentence). If there’s a wild fire burning outside a wilderness area that may burn in to it we’ll try and put it out to “save the wilderness” - wrong answer. If there’s a fire burning outside a wilderness area with even a slim chance of burning into the wilderness then we should not intervene, we should let the fire follow its natural path, even if that means sacrificing towns or suburbs to flame - this is not something we as a society are prepared to do in order to preserve the integrity of a wilderness. All that we are prepared to tolerate is “wilderness Mk 3″, a landscape that embodies neither the characteristics of pre Aboriginal colonisation when the land was truly wild, nor the characteristics of pre European colonisation with the fire management practices that evolved over thousands of years of Aboriginal occupation and stewardship. This “wilderness Mk 3″ is something completely new.
I hate to say this to the tree huggers amongst you, but I suspect that large tracts of “old growth forest” are a relatively new phenomenon, largely made possible through Aboriginal fire management practices. Without such management the mega fires of pre Aboriginal colonisation will return, and these treasures will, over time, be largely destroyed, including those “preserved” under the best of intentions in “wilderness areas”.
Finally, I can not see how you can have an expanse of land with a road, or for that matter a walking track, and still call it a wilderness. By my thinking its little more than a national park with relatively poor access.
And fire is just one of many, many elements of human interaction with the ecology over the past 75,000 years or more that has been both a feature of and a factor in the evolution of the bush.
The recent removal of the human species from the bush is not something to be celebrated and preserved but a major ecological crisis that needs to be attended to.
The ideology of minimum human contact is a product of city consciousness, as if the city is the natural habitat for human beings. But inherent in this ideology is the separation of humans from the environment. Bushwalking may provide some recreation value for humans but it symbolises the parastitic, consumer mode rather than the symbiotic relationship of custodianship and maximum, total, engagement with the bush.