“We got all these managements in place, fire just one of them”

Kuuku I’yu Fire Management

In 2009-11 Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation prepared a fire management and carbon abatement strategy for the Kaanju Ngaachi IPA and the wider Kuuku I’yu Northern Kaanju Ngaachi. The aim of the strategy is to recover traditional fire management on Kuuku I’yu Ngaachi, and investigate the potential of this recovery to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

KUUKU I’YU NORTHERN KAANJU FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

Northern Kaanju Elder and Fire Practitioner Robert Nelson ‘Dundee’ passed his knowledge to the younger generation, 2010

Kuuku I’yu Northern Kaanju Ngaachi is a tropical monsoonal environment, with a long dry season and a shorter wet season where a mean of approximately 1300mm of rain falls in four months.  Most of the 800 000 hectares is fire-prone eucalypt savanna, with small areas of rainforest and other fire-sensitive vegetation types.  It is almost completely vegetated and of great biocultural diversity importance.

A long tradition of fire management was broken during the assimilation era, when Kuuku I’yu people were taken away from their homelands under the protection and assimilation eras of government.  The legacy is a dominance of larger fires in the late dry season, which threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions.  Late fires accounted for 93.7% of the area burnt on the two major Kuuku I’yu properties studied in 2004-2008.  Late dry season fires are a threat to biodiversity, including species such as Kila (Palm Cockatoo), which in Australia is only found on Cape York Peninsula.

Ranger David Claudie Jnr engaged in cool evening burns, 2021 (c) Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation

Traditional Kuuku I’yu fire management focuses on fires lit in the early dry season, which were less intense and extensive.  These earlier fires are placed for a range of reasons, including travel, hunting, safety, protection of fire sensitive environments from later fires, and to create a more open savanna environment that is suitable for a range of wildlife.  In 2008, the 197,500 hectare Kaanju Ngaachi IPA was declared over about 25% of Kuuku I’yu, which recognizes and resources the Chuulangun Rangers to manage this area of country again.  The traditional burning that has occurred around Chuulangun community in the last 10-15 years can now be conducted more widely.

If the return of traditional fire management reduces the annual extent of fires on Kuuku I’yu, as it probably will, there will be lower greenhouse gas emissions, fewer damaging large-scale fires, and probably reduced damage to fire-sensitive rainforests and improved biodiversity.  This greenhouse gas abatement undertaken by the proper Traditional Custodians for Kuuku I’yu Northern Kaanju Ngaachi, through the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation, represents a commercial opportunity that could be used to invest back into a permanent Kuuku I’yu fire management workforce.

A lobbying effort is needed to ensure that Cape York Peninsula environments are recognized in Australian government greenhouse accounting as “savanna woodland” rather than the current “savanna grassland”, which is inaccurate and may greatly underestimate the likely fuel load of Kuuku I’yu country, which is predominantly eucalypt savanna, and hence underestimate the current and projected greenhouse gas emissions. 

FIRE MANAGEMENT WORKFORCE

The fire management workforce needs to have a combination of local knowledge of vegetation and weather dynamics, on-ground bush skills, computer skills, and project management and reporting skills.  There is year-round work to be done once reporting and monitoring are in place.  This work includes the fire conduction itself, but also the maintenance of a firebreak network, late dry season patrols, weed control, fire reporting and mapping, weather, vegetation and biodiversity monitoring.  The estimated value of the greenhouse abatement would fund a workforce of four permanent staff and six seasonal staff, as well as vehicles and equipment for fire practice, weed management, monitoring and reporting. 

Successful fire management on Kuuku I’yu will result in:

1. A greater area burnt at the right time in the early dry season each year (i.e. usually before July 15)
2. A smaller area burnt in the late dry season each year (i.e. usually after August 1), and hence lower release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
3. Annual assessment of fire extent, habitat and biodiversity values
4. Eradication of weeds that will otherwise increase fuel loads and threaten to undo traditional fire management
5. A well-resourced workforce to conduct the activities required to achieve points 1 to 5
6. A commercial agreement recognizing the contribution of the Kuuku I’yu to reducing greenhouse gas emissions
7. A central forum where all current landholders on Kuuku I’yu and neighbouring groups can collaborate on fire management activities
8. New information to western science on the response of the country and its biodiversity to traditional burning for use locally and more widely in northern Australia.

CHUULANGUN FIRE WORKSHOP

Elder and Fire Practitioner Robert Nelson with participants at Fire Workshop 2010

In July 2010 we hosted the Inaugural Indigenous Fire Workshop on the banks of the upper Wenlock River. The workshop was supported by Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways (TKRP). Over 70 people attended the workshop from across Australia and overseas. Attendees included the Lamalama rangers, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, researchers, CSIRO and Indigenous fire practitioners.

Rangers also undertook valuable networking with other Indigenous ranger groups and other attendees from various backgrounds and undertook accredited Conservation and Land Management training. Attendees took away lessons about Indigenous fire management and the important of reviving traditional fire management practices to reduce devastating hot late dry season fires and reducing carbon emissions.

KUUKU I’YU FIRE & BIODIVERSITY STUDY

In 2010, Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation commenced a longitudinal Fire and Biodiversity Study in collaboration with Professor Don Hankins from California State University and ecologist Dr Simon Kennedy with the aim to study the impact of fire on biodiversity over time. A total of 36 permanent fire measurement plots were set up across the southern part of the Kaanju Ngaachi IPA in 2010 and 2012.  All 36 sites were visited in 2016, as they were in 2015, 2012, 2010 and more recently with Chuulangun Rangers.

The link between fire history and litter cover has now been plotted and is now even clearer. This is relevant for both geological land types studied (“Yellow Earth”, known locally as sandplain, and “Granite Valley”) and could be used for ground truthing of fire history in the broader region. We noted that any site with <50% leaf litter was likely to have been burnt within the last 12 months. This method, which is a simple line transect with 20 points, is easily replicated and could be used in audits for Chuulangun’s carbon farming project, and for similar habitats in this region.

The increase in woody regeneration could be linked to hot late fires in some cases and longer intervals between fires in others. Detection of patterns will require multivariate analysis. While notionally pointing to increase in carbon sequestration, high densities of woody regeneration is likely to increase vulnerability to higher intensity late dry season fires.