Hazard reduction burns are widely practiced by Australia's fire fighting agencies, but not everyone thinks they reduce bushfire risk. Proponents of Indigenous burning practices and some scientists say there are better options.
Australian fire services are carrying out controlled hazard burns in an attempt to mitigate the danger of the oncoming fire season - but some critics, including Indigenous fire practitioners, claim they're only making things worse.Hazard control burning is a widely used but contested method of reducing the risk of catastrophic bushfires.
Authorities insisted there was a good reason: with temperatures forecast to hit 30C over the weekend, the NSW Rural Fire Service was rushing to complete hazard reduction burn-offs in Sydney's north, west, and south. "Cultural burning is about the different ecosystems that we [Traditional Owners] manage through fire to prevent bushfires," said Robbie Williams, a descendant of the Githabul and Ngarakbul peoples.
"When they're burning all the canopies of the trees, what they and a lot of people don't realise is that they're creating more fuel loads," he said. "So you get this kind of hump response with fire risk, where straight after fire you've cleared things and the risk is fairly low, and then you get this dense regrowth and the risk increases very quickly."
"I think we can redevelop a kind of cooperative approach to management where we work with the natural processes in the landscape and in the way that First Nations did and still do in some places, allowing old forests to age."Much of the criticism levelled at hazard burning has to do with the idea that it’s a short-term fix with long-term consequences.
"I think that really the key message is cultural burning is something that we need to make sure we don't misappropriate,” he said. “Can we learn from it? Can we assist Aboriginal communities to be able to do more of it? Yes.”
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