Researchers from the University of Melbourne have linked the scale and intensity of recent Australian wildfires to changes in land management practices following British colonization more than two centuries ago. Their findings suggest that the disruption of Indigenous cultural burning methods, coupled with the displacement and massacre of Aboriginal communities, has contributed significantly to the current wildfire crisis.

Aboriginal peoples traditionally used controlled burning to manage the landscape, maintaining open woodlands and preventing the buildup of dense undergrowth. According to Michael-Shawn Fletcher, a professor of biogeography at the university, the removal of Indigenous people and the cessation of their burning practices after British settlement led to denser forests. This shift created conditions more conducive to large and intense fires.

“The destruction from the British invasion and the frontier violence that followed, along with the removal of Aboriginal people, resulted in a fundamental change in fire regimes,” Fletcher said. He described the transition as a cycle where hotter fires lead to an increase in shrub growth and eucalyptus recruitment, perpetuating increasingly severe burn events.

Australia's south-east region has experienced several devastating wildfires over the past decade, including the widespread Black Summer fires of 2019-2020. Those blazes destroyed approximately 24 million hectares of land, including 17 million hectares of forest. While climate change has been widely cited as a primary driver of these fires, the researchers argue that the vulnerability of these landscapes is also tied to historical disruptions of Indigenous fire management.

Published in the journal Nature, the study emphasizes that acknowledging the legacy of colonial land policies is crucial to addressing Australia’s contemporary wildfire challenges. Fletcher cautions against attributing the fires solely to climate change, stating that ignoring historical and ecological context has hindered effective responses to the problem.

The research calls for a renewed focus on Indigenous land stewardship and cultural burning practices as part of broader fire management strategies, highlighting the role such methods might play in reducing fuel loads and mitigating future wildfire severity.