RURAL AND REMOTE AREA FIRE MANAGEMENT
A condensation of "Incinerating North Australia".
by Tony Ryan
Fire regimes in the Top End are controversial, largely because of deeply entrenched positions and
the reluctance of interested parties to confront all of the issues. Essentially, two opposing views are
divided, not by conflicting evidence, but by beliefs that are almost religious in their dogmatism.
Recognising the futility of adopting a position, this discussion paper instead lists all of the elements
relevant to Top End burn-offs. Each element is derived from evidence which may or may not be later
confirmed by independent analysis. Conclusions belong to the reader.
1. Natural fires are rare during the dry season and, in the Top End, are restricted to the buildup
part of the wet season. All our natural fires are caused by lightning and most are
extinguished by ensuing rain.
2. Surveys conducted since 1971 demonstrate that lightening does not create fire on country
with lateritic soils; which are typically dominated by well-developed stands of Stringybark.
On such soil unit zones the most likely tree to be struck will be a tall Stringybark but, instead
of catching fire, the tree is attacked in one of four ways:
3. Virtually all dry season fires are man-made, therefore, the pivotal complex issue is why, how,
and when should fires be lit.
4. The argument that some trees require fire for seed germination precludes the reality that
the subsequent seedlings are destroyed by fire should this occur within two years. Invariably
it does, and satellite photos show variously 90% to 100% burning each year. The similar
argument that some seeds (ie Canarium Australianum) are impervious to the elements,
except for fire, precludes the more likely explanation that the seed is designed to last for
several decades on the woodland floor until a tree dies thereby vacating a space in the
upper story, exposing the seed to sunlight and, thus, potential for plant growth. That fire
cracks hard seed cases is incidental. Likewise, Macadamia trees, with equally hard seed
cases, are fire-sensitive.
5. The belief that some trees are designed to withstand regular fire (ie Woolybutt, with its
shaggy bark protection on the first few metres of trunk) ignores the presence of
neighbouring fire-sensitive trees (ie Northern Cypress, Canarium Australianum), and several
shrubs and ferns.
6. The cherished belief in Aboriginal hunting fires, featuring the concept of fire flushing the
kangaroo out of hiding and into range of the spearsman, ignores the impossibility of such a
vision (which owes its genesis to the kids' movie, Bambi). No hunter in his right mind would
attempt to spear a bounding kangaroo while a stalked stationary target is the easilyencountered
alternative. In point of fact, an actual traditional hunting fire consists of a three acre area burned to promote new green grass some weeks later, upon which wallabies and kangaroos will feed and which can then be speared. Moreover, this burn area must be limited to the maximum spear-throwing range of 130 metres. Containment of this fire genre is labour-intensive and utilises human energy which is difficult to replace on this carbohydrate-deficient continent. Furthermore, such a fire would be limited to every 8 years or so, when that clan took turn to host a particular ceremony. As to animals fleeing fire, observably, in the north, this is limited to grasshoppers and the only hunters are kites and butcher birds.
7. The biggest genre Top End Aboriginal fire, roughly 3-4 sq kilometres and to protect a long term camp in May/June, was to eliminate foliage from which direction mosquitoes were expected to fly. Altogether, 7 named fire types were identified by 1970s elderly people in NE Arnhem Land, none of which were extensive. That young people now burn vast tracts haphazardly, “to burn off the rubbish” says more about the depth of acculturation generated by the media, teachers and anthropologists, than passed-on knowledge. Pioneer aviator Aussie Osgood noted that smoke did not become a flying hazard over Aboriginal land until the 1980s. Ironically, there is no Aboriginal word for “rubbish”, or concept thereof. Nor is there a word for “looking after country'' except in terms of respecting significant spirits who dwell therein. It is the established practice of monolingual white academics to reinterpret other cultures in terms of their own ideology.
8. Aboriginal descriptions of fires that “clean the country” are entirely the product of a century of cattle station influence. The pre-contact versions, upon which 19th century cattlemen modelled their own chains of broadacre burning, have long since been forgotten in most parts of the NT. Expressions such as firestick farming and mosaic of burning, and nurtured by forestall custodians, are fanciful at best.
9. Goyder's Ironwood survey plinths, and the ferro-cement replacements which were set (purportedly) a uniform 20 inches (500 mm) above ground, are now anything up to 650 mm exposed and are mute testament to the vast extent of sheet soil erosion that has occurred since 1880. Only one factor could have caused this... fire: Soils denuded by fire in the Dry, are blown away by the steady SE wind and, with the onset of the Wet, are washed away. This is the cause of the salt water intrusion and silting-up of billabongs and rivers, blamed by city-boy scientists as caused by buffalo. This gives new and more poignant meaning to the term skeletal soils coined so thoughtlessly by agronomists and soil experts. Fire has literally killed the soil. Surveyors and other Territorians who recall much denser and three-tiered woodland canopies did not consider earlier soils to be skeletal at all (ie the once-dense Black Jungle Spring, off Jim Jim Rd, is now devoid of foliage).
10. The sudden reduction in wildlife Australia-wide, noted just over a decade ago, was blamed on land-clearing yet the Top End, with less than 1% cleared, suffered a comparable rate of animal loss. A more correlative explanation is fire. National conservation scientists claimed there was no evidence of animals and birds being burned to death, they having already searched for tell-tale bones and teeth, but the most popular woodland floor homes for such fauna are Ironwood logs and hollow trees which burn with such intense heat that even teeth are consumed. This loss of fauna is now critical, coupled as it is with the invasion of cane toads.
11. The fuel which most carries fire, spear grass, is facilitated in its growth by fire which destroys competing flora. The faster growing grass then smothers emerging plants. Ergo: more fire equals more speargrass, equals more fire.
12. Regular burn-offs kill small saplings, which then sprout multiple trunks from lignotubers, action which ultimately reduces woodland canopy height, which in turn represses lower canopies. Moreover, fire-scared trees are more susceptible to pathogens.
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© Copyright Tony Hayward-Ryan 2015
13. Quite apart from the more obvious negatives, it is possible that excessive burn-offs release environmentally-damaging levels of cyanide into the atmosphere.
14. Conservation-minded citizens have called for a complete ban on burn-offs, however, fire is the only practical means of eliminating fuel thereby creating safety corridors around human habitation. Obviously, some kind of compromise will be necessary.
15. It has been estimated from observations of isolated woodlands at Weipa, that if fires were prevented for 35 years the consequential density of triple-canopied woodlands would eliminate the fire-carrying speargrass, increase ground level moisture retention, restore soil bacteria and other biota, reduce exposure to wind and sun, and generally make woodlands much less fire-prone.
16. If cattlemen do not burn areas of their stations, a practice which provides green pick in the dry season, the cattle will starve. However, as the then Departments of Primary Industries and Primary Production pointed out in the 1970s, Buffalo will thrive when cattle will starve and, with buffalo, burning off is unnecessary.
Inexplicably, all of this information and more was published in 1996 but the booklet (Kakadu Burning) was banned by then Chief Minister Shane Stone, and rejected out of hand by Kakadu's (then) ANPWS who, at that time, lit by far the most extensive fires in NT history. In recent years, many of the points recorded above, or in the paper titled Incinerating North Australia, have been separately conceded by scientists, but without any reference to the more accurate analysis published two decades before their own.
It is painfully evident that through the incestuous corruption employed by the euphemism peer review, academics and scientists acknowledge only the products of their own exclusive club, which is how they maintain professional credibility and employment. The sooner their self-endowed legitimacy is challenged the better. There are far more intelligent and realistic people in the wider community.
Tony Ryan
NT.
© Copyright Tony Ryan 2018
the reluctance of interested parties to confront all of the issues. Essentially, two opposing views are
divided, not by conflicting evidence, but by beliefs that are almost religious in their dogmatism.
Recognising the futility of adopting a position, this discussion paper instead lists all of the elements
relevant to Top End burn-offs. Each element is derived from evidence which may or may not be later
confirmed by independent analysis. Conclusions belong to the reader.
1. Natural fires are rare during the dry season and, in the Top End, are restricted to the buildup
part of the wet season. All our natural fires are caused by lightning and most are
extinguished by ensuing rain.
2. Surveys conducted since 1971 demonstrate that lightening does not create fire on country
with lateritic soils; which are typically dominated by well-developed stands of Stringybark.
On such soil unit zones the most likely tree to be struck will be a tall Stringybark but, instead
of catching fire, the tree is attacked in one of four ways:
- The entire trunk between the first branch and the root system disintegrates into splinters
- ranging from toothpick size to three metres long, with shards hurled up to fifty metres away;
- or,
- The trunk or a branch is sliced cleanly; or,
- The lightning travels the entire exterior of the tree leaving all bark hanging in shreds; or,
- The lightning chips a small piece of bark off a branch, with no further visually evident
- damage but the tree dies instantly.
3. Virtually all dry season fires are man-made, therefore, the pivotal complex issue is why, how,
and when should fires be lit.
4. The argument that some trees require fire for seed germination precludes the reality that
the subsequent seedlings are destroyed by fire should this occur within two years. Invariably
it does, and satellite photos show variously 90% to 100% burning each year. The similar
argument that some seeds (ie Canarium Australianum) are impervious to the elements,
except for fire, precludes the more likely explanation that the seed is designed to last for
several decades on the woodland floor until a tree dies thereby vacating a space in the
upper story, exposing the seed to sunlight and, thus, potential for plant growth. That fire
cracks hard seed cases is incidental. Likewise, Macadamia trees, with equally hard seed
cases, are fire-sensitive.
5. The belief that some trees are designed to withstand regular fire (ie Woolybutt, with its
shaggy bark protection on the first few metres of trunk) ignores the presence of
neighbouring fire-sensitive trees (ie Northern Cypress, Canarium Australianum), and several
shrubs and ferns.
6. The cherished belief in Aboriginal hunting fires, featuring the concept of fire flushing the
kangaroo out of hiding and into range of the spearsman, ignores the impossibility of such a
vision (which owes its genesis to the kids' movie, Bambi). No hunter in his right mind would
attempt to spear a bounding kangaroo while a stalked stationary target is the easilyencountered
alternative. In point of fact, an actual traditional hunting fire consists of a three acre area burned to promote new green grass some weeks later, upon which wallabies and kangaroos will feed and which can then be speared. Moreover, this burn area must be limited to the maximum spear-throwing range of 130 metres. Containment of this fire genre is labour-intensive and utilises human energy which is difficult to replace on this carbohydrate-deficient continent. Furthermore, such a fire would be limited to every 8 years or so, when that clan took turn to host a particular ceremony. As to animals fleeing fire, observably, in the north, this is limited to grasshoppers and the only hunters are kites and butcher birds.
7. The biggest genre Top End Aboriginal fire, roughly 3-4 sq kilometres and to protect a long term camp in May/June, was to eliminate foliage from which direction mosquitoes were expected to fly. Altogether, 7 named fire types were identified by 1970s elderly people in NE Arnhem Land, none of which were extensive. That young people now burn vast tracts haphazardly, “to burn off the rubbish” says more about the depth of acculturation generated by the media, teachers and anthropologists, than passed-on knowledge. Pioneer aviator Aussie Osgood noted that smoke did not become a flying hazard over Aboriginal land until the 1980s. Ironically, there is no Aboriginal word for “rubbish”, or concept thereof. Nor is there a word for “looking after country'' except in terms of respecting significant spirits who dwell therein. It is the established practice of monolingual white academics to reinterpret other cultures in terms of their own ideology.
8. Aboriginal descriptions of fires that “clean the country” are entirely the product of a century of cattle station influence. The pre-contact versions, upon which 19th century cattlemen modelled their own chains of broadacre burning, have long since been forgotten in most parts of the NT. Expressions such as firestick farming and mosaic of burning, and nurtured by forestall custodians, are fanciful at best.
9. Goyder's Ironwood survey plinths, and the ferro-cement replacements which were set (purportedly) a uniform 20 inches (500 mm) above ground, are now anything up to 650 mm exposed and are mute testament to the vast extent of sheet soil erosion that has occurred since 1880. Only one factor could have caused this... fire: Soils denuded by fire in the Dry, are blown away by the steady SE wind and, with the onset of the Wet, are washed away. This is the cause of the salt water intrusion and silting-up of billabongs and rivers, blamed by city-boy scientists as caused by buffalo. This gives new and more poignant meaning to the term skeletal soils coined so thoughtlessly by agronomists and soil experts. Fire has literally killed the soil. Surveyors and other Territorians who recall much denser and three-tiered woodland canopies did not consider earlier soils to be skeletal at all (ie the once-dense Black Jungle Spring, off Jim Jim Rd, is now devoid of foliage).
10. The sudden reduction in wildlife Australia-wide, noted just over a decade ago, was blamed on land-clearing yet the Top End, with less than 1% cleared, suffered a comparable rate of animal loss. A more correlative explanation is fire. National conservation scientists claimed there was no evidence of animals and birds being burned to death, they having already searched for tell-tale bones and teeth, but the most popular woodland floor homes for such fauna are Ironwood logs and hollow trees which burn with such intense heat that even teeth are consumed. This loss of fauna is now critical, coupled as it is with the invasion of cane toads.
11. The fuel which most carries fire, spear grass, is facilitated in its growth by fire which destroys competing flora. The faster growing grass then smothers emerging plants. Ergo: more fire equals more speargrass, equals more fire.
12. Regular burn-offs kill small saplings, which then sprout multiple trunks from lignotubers, action which ultimately reduces woodland canopy height, which in turn represses lower canopies. Moreover, fire-scared trees are more susceptible to pathogens.
3
© Copyright Tony Hayward-Ryan 2015
13. Quite apart from the more obvious negatives, it is possible that excessive burn-offs release environmentally-damaging levels of cyanide into the atmosphere.
14. Conservation-minded citizens have called for a complete ban on burn-offs, however, fire is the only practical means of eliminating fuel thereby creating safety corridors around human habitation. Obviously, some kind of compromise will be necessary.
15. It has been estimated from observations of isolated woodlands at Weipa, that if fires were prevented for 35 years the consequential density of triple-canopied woodlands would eliminate the fire-carrying speargrass, increase ground level moisture retention, restore soil bacteria and other biota, reduce exposure to wind and sun, and generally make woodlands much less fire-prone.
16. If cattlemen do not burn areas of their stations, a practice which provides green pick in the dry season, the cattle will starve. However, as the then Departments of Primary Industries and Primary Production pointed out in the 1970s, Buffalo will thrive when cattle will starve and, with buffalo, burning off is unnecessary.
Inexplicably, all of this information and more was published in 1996 but the booklet (Kakadu Burning) was banned by then Chief Minister Shane Stone, and rejected out of hand by Kakadu's (then) ANPWS who, at that time, lit by far the most extensive fires in NT history. In recent years, many of the points recorded above, or in the paper titled Incinerating North Australia, have been separately conceded by scientists, but without any reference to the more accurate analysis published two decades before their own.
It is painfully evident that through the incestuous corruption employed by the euphemism peer review, academics and scientists acknowledge only the products of their own exclusive club, which is how they maintain professional credibility and employment. The sooner their self-endowed legitimacy is challenged the better. There are far more intelligent and realistic people in the wider community.
Tony Ryan
NT.
© Copyright Tony Ryan 2018
