Burning for biodiversity using fire-stick farming
It is believed the Gagadju people first settled the Kakadu area approximately 50 000 years ago. They regularly burnt woodlands, forests and grasslands to help them hunt and gather food throughout the year. This practice is known as fire-stick farming.
Between May and August, early in the dry season, the woodlands and paperbark forests that surrounded grasslands were burnt. Later in the dry season, from September to the beginning of the wet season in December, the native grasslands containing Mudja (Hymenachne acutigluma) were burnt. These fires were contained, because there was little fuel for them to spread into the previously burnt forests and woodlands.
Over the years the Mudja has been allowed to spread and, as a result of the abandonment of traditional fire practices, the biodiversity in these areas has been greatly reduced.
A solution to this problem came from the combination of science and traditional knowledge and practice.
CSIRO and the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre worked with traditional owners in Kakadu as part of a ‘Burning for Biodiversity’ project. They reapplied Aboriginal fire management to the Boggy Plain floodplains of the South Alligator River. Plant variety such as water lilies, wild rice and spike rushes has increased and there is also greater variety of habitats including more open water. Turtles, magpie geese and other wetland birds have returned.
The project has ensured that traditional knowledge is recognised, remembered and passed to the next generation.