- Title:
-
Abandoning Natural Fire in Australia: What has been forgotten?
- Date:
- September 2008
- Organisations
- AFAC 2008 Conference
- Authors:
- L. Liddle
- Location:
- Australia, SA, Australia
Overview
The International Bushfire Research Conference 2008 - incorporating The 15th annual AFAC Conference, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
For over 40 000 years, fire has not just been part of the Australian landscape, it has been part of the sheathe that has covered the lands, the landscape and the animals, plants and people within it. Fire in the Australian landscape is not only a function of complex adaptive system, which may be considered philosophical by others, it represents strong factual encyclopedic information, functional to Australian landscape. On a continental scale, Aboriginal people have worked and continue to work with lightning, landscapes, and natural elements that manage their conservation goals.
In the Far South Australian lands the Aboriginal lands continue to show that fire is not just for conservation alone. Fire is part of the lands conservation productivity and philosophy, which science specifically shows, they must have been doing something right.
This encyclopedic knowledge of fires is encrypted and encoded into the biological principles that Australians have only assumed, relate to land alone. In fact, over 30% of the APY lands is burnt every year, and over 20,000 people live, manage and rely heavily upon the outcomes of fire management. I talk from my experience of working with the most committed, dedicated and knowledgeable people with whom I act as a cultural mid-wife, in implementing fire management.
It is from this position that I see Aboriginal people as intelligent equals, who can contribute more to the meta-understanding of fires, and those fires that we have not known, and may be yet to come.
