There’s a better way to fight wildfires, indigenous groups say – The Mercury News

Amy Bainbridge and Angus Whitley | Bloomberg News

More frequent fires. Smaller, cooler blazes. Nighttime and early morning burns.

Those are three important principles of what’s known as cultural burning, a firefighting practice honed by Indigenous people in Australia over the past 60,000 years. The techniques stand in marked contrast to the “hazard-reduction” burns employed in the US, Canada and other places prone to wildfires, including most of Australia. Indigenous advocates say their own methods are more effective, safer and kinder to native flora and fauna.

In the wake of Black Summer three years ago, Australian politicians said they’d prioritize Indigenous techniques. It’s since funded a range of grants and says it is continuing to make investments. But Indigenous organizations say far more is needed, especially now, with El Niño conditions bringing warmer temperatures that portend a more severe fire season.

Bloomberg Green spoke with two leaders of Australian organizations that promote and provide training in traditional burning methods, and a Canadian councilor who has welcomed Indigenous Australians to his province to help conduct cultural burns there. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How is the Indigenous approach different to a typical hazard-reduction burn?

Victor Steffensen, co-founder and lead fire practitioner, Firesticks, a nonprofit that promote Indigenous techniques: Our burning application is all year-around, when we include the harvesting techniques and the preparation of country (land). Sometimes we burn the same place two or three times in one year. If there’s vegetation, like introduced grasses, that doesn’t belong in those systems, we’ve been walking through and burning them at different times than when we burn the native species. That allows us to protect the soils and the right types of vegetation.

Robbie Williams, the custodian of Fire Lore, which uses cultural burns: As it gets late in the afternoon, the winds will start to die right down. Then we’ll start coming in and doing all of our night burns so we can get more control of that fire and make it do exactly what we want. If you come into one of our burns, what we call cold burns, you can literally walk along with the fire, touch the soil. Green grasses are still there.

You won’t get our fires going past your knees — that’s how little our fires are. When we burn, it gets rid of the fuel loads. It helps the trees become healthier. When they get into a nice healthy state, bushfires can’t come there anymore.