MainDB: Community-based fire management in the Tanami Desert region of central Australia

Title: Community-based fire management in the Tanami Desert region of central Australia
NWPWeblink:
NWPTypeOfOrganization: UN and affiliated organization
NWPGeographicRegion: Pacific/Oceania
Scope of work:
NWPMandatesandFrameworks:
NWPModalityApproachandMechanism:
NWPEffortsToAddressSOE:
NWPRelevantStakeholders:
NWPFocusonNElossesFlag:
NWPImpactAreas:
NWPOutputs:
Good practices and lessons learned: In order to support the many components of remote fire management by Aboriginal landholders in the Tanami, a structured process of planning, implementation, monitoring and review has evolved over the last four years. This adaptive management model is integrated with Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) programmes and Aboriginal ranger group work plans to take advantage of existing governance structures, personnel, and resources.
 
Five factors have been critical to its success:
 
The establishment and enhanced capacity of Aboriginal ranger groups in the region supported under the Working on Country programme of the former DEWHA;
 
The development of two IPAs in the northern and southern portions of the Tanami, with DEWHA funding support;
 
The establishment and resourcing of a dedicated fire management position within the Central Land Council (CLC);
 
The development of a peak Tanami Aboriginal regional fire management body, the Warlu Committee, through research supported by the Natural Resource Management (NRM) Board (NT); and
 
The strong partnership approach was taken by the CLC and Aboriginal traditional owners, together with the Northern Territory Government, and with Bushfires NT, in particular.
 
The Warlu Committee (“Warlu” means “fire” in Warlpiri, the largest language group of the Tanami) consists of two elected representatives from seven key Aboriginal communities and one or more Aboriginal rangers from each. This group provides the strategic direction for fire management on Aboriginal land across the broader Tanami region. Members also sit on IPA management committees and regional fire-planning groups, thus forming a strong link between regional and local planning processes.
 
Process of regional fire planning: 
Regional fire planning occurs in five key communities, where groups of 30 to 40 people meet annually to plan and prioritize fire management activities for the coming fire season. The activities under consideration are in addition to traditional burning undertaken by family groups throughout the year in their more accessible country. In places where IPA committees operate, fire-planning workshops are held as part of the larger IPA pre-fire-season planning meetings. The ethos behind these planning meetings is to provide the best available contemporary knowledge, tools and technology to each group, so that they can combine these assets with their traditional knowledge and skills to enable them to make informed fire management decisions. These annual planning workshops identify a selection of prescribed burning and wildfire mitigation activities that are required during the year. These activities, which may include both ground-based and aerial burning, are incorporated into the work programmes of Aboriginal ranger groups, members of which receive training by staff of the CLC and Bushfires NT. Operational costs are met primarily by the CLC, which accesses project-based grant funding from a variety of sources.
 
The use of Aboriginal knowledge on fire management fosters cultural maintenance: 
Prescribed burning and wildfire mitigation activities are undertaken as part of the larger body of work for that country, often in combined ‘country’ (cultural) fire trips. The benefits of pooling resources and combining burning activities with cultural maintenance have become very important for effective and strategic fire management practices, providing a familiar framework for traditional owners to re-engage with the broad-scale management of their country. Similarly, land-management activities such as these are important opportunities to facilitate the intergenerational transfer of indigenous knowledge and skills in the country. The older generation of Aboriginal people in this area hold the most knowledge about the impacts of fire on the landscape, how to use it safely, and the physical barriers used to stop its unwanted spread; many of them acquired this knowledge through walking through the country with their parents and grandparents. They understand how best to use fire to keep their land and people healthy. They value the opportunities with which land management presents them to be in the country with their young people, to teach them about fire, and to impart other important cultural knowledge.
 
Monitoring and review of the burning activities: 
After the burning season has ended, the results of the year’s activity are reviewed at an annual post-fire-season meeting of the Warlu Committee. At the annual meeting, Aboriginal rangers and members from across the Tanami discuss the fire-related work they have done throughout the year, where they have had successes, and where challenges need to be resolved. The committee provides these groups with feedback and guidance on the following year’s strategies and on how the different groups can work together most strategically.
 
The success of the system – benefits for Aboriginal communities: 
This system of planning, implementation, monitoring and review enjoys a high level of participation because it provides Aboriginal people with the opportunity to make decisions about their lands and to work on their own country. More importantly, by using a participatory approach Aboriginal people are able to influence the future of their culture and their children (Walsh and Mitchell, 2002). In the past, fire management programmes have met with only limited success in Central Australia, in large part because of the area’s vastness, a poor level of engagement with indigenous landholders by relevant authorities, and a scarcity of resources available to implement management on this scale (Griffin, 1992).
 
However, this new programme has a greater potential for success as a result of new partnerships based on:
Mutual recognition of the role of fire in maintaining biodiversity and its cultural significance to Aboriginal people; and
The level of community ownership and participation.
 
Challenges and potential solutions:
 
To ensure longevity, there remains an ongoing need to continue the development of capacity among local people to take more prominent roles in facilitating the fire management programme across the country in which they live.
 
Challenge at a policy level where the discord between indigenous and mainstream fire management practices continues to be evident (Vaarzon- Morel and Gabrys, 2008). Government policies that encourage traditional burning (Bird, Bird, and Parker, 2003) and that recognize the nationally significant environmental service it provides would help to reconcile this situation, as would formal recognition of the role of groups such as the Warlu Committee.
 
Need to resource its operational aspects adequately, in particular, the costly activities of aerial burning and access track construction. These techniques are required both to meet the threshold needed to return fire regimes to a broad-scale traditional patchwork mosaic and to minimize risk. In the future, a GHG market, or a market based on other green and social services, may provide an economy that will fund fire jobs in the country and will meet the operational costs of CBFiM in the Tanami Desert.
 
Need to fund and support research on the specific long-term biological impacts and benefits of changed fire regimes on different ecotypes in knowledge-poor bioregions. The first and most basic aspect is for fine-scale fire history and vegetation mapping across Central Australia.
 
Programme participants are still learning how to apply fire on a broad scale to a highly flammable landscape that houses vulnerable ‘islands’ of ecological and cultural significance in contemporary Australia. The ability to manage the risks associated with applying fire at this scale will require increased collaboration with neighbours and so will provide more opportunities and benefits extending well beyond fire management.
 
Challenge of tailoring the format of review and planning workshops, as well as the language of fire, tools, and techniques, to suit the several dominant indigenous language groups in the region. Programme facilitators, aim to understand better and further benefit from the wealth of traditional fire and country knowledge held by traditional owners. In return, contemporary burning activities themselves will seek to serve better the aspirations of traditional owners for their country and their families, in particular, by making a significant contribution to the transfer of traditional knowledge to future generations of indigenous managers of the Tanami landscape.
NWPGapsChallenges:
Date of submission: 18/04/2016
Abbreviation:
Activities:
Adaptation element: Adaptation planning and practices; Knowledge management
Adaptation sector/theme: Ecosystems; Community-based adaptation; Disaster risk reduction; Indigenous and traditional knowledge
Climate hazard: Wildfire
Country: Australia
NWPDataSource: Local, indigenous and traditional knowledge
Description: For millennia, Aboriginal people have applied fire to their country to serve a myriad of purposes. Today the indigenous people of the Tanami Desert in Central Australia continue the practice of applying fire to their land systematically and, in so doing, maintain a central strand of their culture and connection with their traditional country. While fire is a part of daily life in desert communities, in mainstream Australia it is gaining recognition as a critical tool for the maintenance and protection of biological and cultural assets. Over the last twelve years, the Central Land Council (CLC) has actively encouraged and supported Aboriginal peoples’ involvement in Community-based Fire Management (CBFiM) in the Tanami region. For the last five years, this programme has had at its core an evolving participatory process with traditional owners of the region that combines traditional and contemporary fire knowledge, practices and technologies in annual cycles of planning, implementation, monitoring, and review.
 
Aboriginal knowledge for fire management: 
Aboriginal oral history recorded in songs and stories passed down from generation to generation over thousands of years suggests that fire was applied deliberately, systematically and broadly across much of the Australian continent prior to European colonization. This evidence is supported by the records of nineteenth-century European explorers who routinely recorded fires burning in the landscape (Jones, 1969; Griffin, 1992). It is thought that over tens of thousands of years the biota of the Australian arid interior was modified by its inhabitants, who effectively “farmed” the country with fire (Latz, 2007). This “firestick farming” (Jones, 1969) has created a patchwork mosaic of postfire ages in spinifex-dominated landscapes (Burrows and Christensen, 1991), which has induced a higher level of biodiversity and productivity than would otherwise have occurred. It has also protected the many areas of significant biological and cultural value from the harsh and destructive effects of intense summer wildfires, particularly along travel routes where burning activity was focused (Griffin, 1992).
 
Belatedly today, the mainstream scientific and land-management communities have recognized the wildfire prevention and biodiversity values of traditional burning practices. Current practices aim to emulate the pre-European state of widespread fire application both to maintain connection to country and to protect the significant biological values of Central Australia. This case study describes how this goal is being achieved by Aboriginal people of the Tanami Desert, the many challenges involved in doing so successfully and the multiple benefits provided. Project: In response to these issues, a programme of CBFiM has been developed by the Central Land Council together with Northern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) management committees, traditional owners and Aboriginal ranger groups, with support from the Northern Territory government body responsible for fire control, Bushfires NT.
 
The objective of this programme in the Tanami region is to emulate previous periods of active fire management progressively over extensive areas, in a way that shifts the seasonality of fires back to a pre-European balance. It aims to make the best use of contemporary fire management tools and techniques, community governance structures and a depth of traditional knowledge, all to facilitate effective fire management by remote indigenous peoples across their lands. The programme promotes local ownership of fire management activities and provides an important mechanism for maintaining connection to country and culture, aspects of which are known to have tangible social and health benefits for Aboriginal people (Burgess et al., 2004). The Central Land Council was established under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 with, among other functions, statutory responsibilities for Aboriginal land acquisition and land management for an area of approximately 780 000 km2 in the southern half of the Northern Territory. The Council comprises 90 Aboriginal people elected from across its vast region, representing some 24 000 Aboriginal people from 15 language groups.
Expected outcome:
Further information: Information about the case study and good practice is sourced from FAO (2011) Community Based Fire Management A Review. FAO, Rome. Authors of the case study for the FAO: Gina Broun, Central Land, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia Grant Allan, Bushfires NT, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. Find the case study at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/i2495e/i2495e.pdf
 
For further information on fire management based on indigenous practices in Australia see The Fire Book, written for Indigenous communities in central Australia and designed for use by Indigenous community rangers, educators, land management agencies working with communities, etc. at: http://www.schools.nt.edu.au/tlcland/publications/Fire%20Book.pdf
NWPGeographicScope: Local
Indicators of achievement:
NWPInformationType: Case study
NWPJoinDate:
NWPPartner: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Purpose:
Regional group:
Target group: Communities
NWPWorkStream: NWP
NWPYear:
NWPOutcome: Improved fire management:
 
Well-resourced and informed ranger groups involved in all aspects of the programme;
 
Improved relationships between traditional owners and government fire authorities; and
 
Improved access by Aboriginal people to technical expertise.
 
The results of burning activities are monitored through the acquisition and interpretation of satellite images as the burning season progresses, by the use of ‘hotspot’ fire-tracking websites, and through repeat visitations to burnt country. Satellite imagery is used to identify fire scars and areas of high fuel loads, and this information is then used to refine subsequent burning activities. Also, websites such as the North Australian Fire Information service prove invaluable in monitoring the active spread of fires in remote areas.
 
Key benefits to the Aboriginal people and their land seen so far include:
 
Increasing levels of active participation and ownership by traditional owners;
 
Improved relationships with neighbors of Aboriginal Land Trusts;
 
Protection of cultural and environmental values, and value of assets such as buildings;
 
Reinvigorated connection of people with their remote country; and
 
Increased opportunities for intergenerational knowledge transfer.
 
An IPA is an area of indigenous-owned land or sea where traditional Aboriginal owners have entered into an agreement with the Australian Government to promote biodiversity and cultural resource conservation. In return, the government agrees to give some support to the traditional owners to carry out the land-management work required to conserve the land’s ecological and cultural value. The North Australian Fire Information service is available at: https://firenorth.org.au/nafi2/.
NWPPartners:
Type of knowledge resource:
Scale of work:
NWPSlowOnsetEvents:
NWPReferences: Bird, W., Bird, R.B. & Parker, C.H. 2003. Women who hunt with fire: Aboriginal resource use and fire regimes in Australia’s Western Desert. Arid Lands Newsletter, 54.
 
Burrows, N. & Christensen, P. 1991. A survey of Aboriginal fire patterns in the Western Desert of Western Australia. In Nodvin, S.C. and Waldrop, T.A., eds., Fire and the environment: ecological and cultural perspectives. General Technical Report SE-69. USDA Forest Service, Southeastern Experiment Station.
 
Burgess, C.P., Johnston, F.H., Bowman, D.M. & Whitehead, P.J. 2004. Healthy country: healthy people? Exploring the health benefits of indigenous natural resource management. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health Indigenous Health, 29(2): 117–22.
 
Griffin, G. 1992. Will it burn – should it burn?: management of the spinifex grasslands of inland Australia. Desertified Grasslands: Their Biology and Management: 63–76.
 
Jones, R. 1969. Fire-stick farming. In Australian Natural History, 16: 224–28.
 
Latz, P.K. 2007. The flaming desert: arid Australia: a fire-shaped landscape. Alice Springs, Australia, Peter Latz.
 
Vaarzon-Morel, P. & Gabrys, K. 2008 Fire on the horizon: contemporary Aboriginal burning issues in the Tanami Desert, central Australia. GeoJournal, 74(5): 465–476.
 
Walsh, F. and Mitchell, P. 2002. Planning for country: cross-cultural approaches to decision making on Aboriginal lands. Alice Springs, Australia, Jukurrpa Books/IAD Press.
Implementing partners:
NWPYearPublication:
NWPUpdate:
SourceItemID:
NWPSecendaryEmail:
NWPPrimaryEmail:
NWPTypeOfKnowledge:
NWPCountryItem:
NWPRelevantWeblinks:

Created at 13/05/2016 12:08 by Roberto Felix
Last modified at 10/05/2022 18:47 by Nicholas Hamp-Adams
 
Go back to list
Home(NWPStaging)