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Destructive wildfires have been plaguing the Arnhem
Land plateau
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Savanna land managers often face challenges with limited resources,
and with no ready-made solutions that can be shipped in from other
parts of the country. The Tropical Savannas CRC (TS-CRC) has helped
these land managers develop their own solutions.
For example, the Indigenous communities of West Arnhem Land have
developed an innovative solution to the problem of frequent
wildfire that has plagued that region in recent decades – and
the TS-CRC played a key role in its development.
By the late 20th century, with few people living on
the West Arnhem Plateau and plenty of grassy fuel growth during the
northern wet season, wildfires would start in the hot, dry time of
the year (September – December) and sweep across the plateau
with little to stop them. Such frequent fires were damaging many
cultural and natural values of the plateau including art sites and
biodiversity of world significance.
Before the arrival of Europeans, Indigenous people would burn the
plateau regularly for various purposes, resulting in a mosaic of
differently burnt areas across the landscape – which would
pull up wildfires in their tracks as the burnt areas contained less
grass to burn. The Indigenous communities of the region were
concerned at the damage being done to the plateau by the frequent
wildfires and wanted to re-introduce these traditional burning
practices, but this was difficult with so few people living on the
plateau.
To overcome this problem, Indigenous Ranger groups and western
scientists developed techniques for managing fire on the plateau
that used a combination of traditional knowledge and skills and
western science and technology. This “two tool kit”
approach saw Indigenous Rangers using helicopters to implement fire
breaks rapidly across large areas of country, but also using their
own intimate knowledge of the country on how to place the burns. In
this way they complementing the aerial burning with on-ground fire
management. The Tropical Savannas CRC helped researchers provide
practical advice and products like satellite maps of fire activity
and a website that displayed continually updated satellite maps of
fire (www.firenorth.org.au) that the Rangers could use to
quickly monitor fires across the plateau.
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The NAFI website is used as a key tool in monitoring
fires in the WALFA project
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The TS-CRC also supported research that identified another problem
with these frequent wildfires: they were net emitters of Greenhouse
Gases like methane and nitrous oxide with hundreds of thousands of
tonnes of these gases being emitted each year from the plateau.
However, this impact turned out to be a key to solving a major
problem – how the new Indigenous “two tool kit”
fire management could be funded into the future. The research
demonstrated that the more traditional patchy burning resulted in
significantly less greenhouse gas emissions from the plateau. As
the wildfires largely stemmed from smaller fires that escaped from
people’s activities in the area surrounding the plateau their
emissions were “anthropogenic” and as re-introducing
more traditional burning would reduce these anthropogenic emissions
such a re-introduction would be eligible for payments from the
voluntary carbon trading market.
This idea became a reality when the Northern Territory
Government started negotiating with Darwin Liquefied Natural Gas
Pty Ltd. the developers of a large LNG facility in Darwin harbour.
Both parties were looking for a way in which some of the GHG
emissions from the new plant could be “offset” by
initiatives that reduced emissions and the NT Government proposed
that the West Arnhem Land fire abatement project be funded by DLNG
as a way of achieving these offsets. In late 2006 DLNG agreed to
pay Indigenous land managers over $1M a year for the next 17 years
to reduce wildfires in return for GHG emission reductions.
What’s been
achieved?
The impacts of the WALFA project can be
grouped under three headings:
The area affected by wildfire has
been reduced
The project has significantly changed
the fire patterns across the western part of the Arnhem Land
Plateau reducing the extent of late dry season wildfire. This is
shown in the graph below which shows the extent of early and late
dry season fire from 1995-2008. The years 1995-2006 before the
project began in earnest generally have low extents of fire in the
early part of the year and higher extents of fire in later, hotter
time of year – ie often have extensive wildfire. The years
2007 – 2008 by contrast have higher extents of burning in the
early, cooler part of the year which actually represent many
patches of cooler burns, and much lower extents of burning in the
late, hotter time of year representing reduced wildfire.
Greenhouse gases have been
abated
Due to the success in reducing
wildfire, in the first four years of operation total Greenhouse
Gases equivalent to 488,000 tonnes of CO2 have been
abated* (relative to the baseline average emissions 1995-2004)
– around 20% ahead of the agreed target of 100,000 tonnes
abatement per year. .
*Note that only emissions of methane
and nitrous oxides are counted here as under current Kyoto rules
savanna fires are not considered to net emitters of
CO2.
Indigenous communities have been
strengthened
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Young men from local communities working with
researchers to assess the impact of fires
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The project is now employing around 30 Indigenous fire managers.
The local Indigenous communities are also benefiting from other
activities enabled by the project:
·
a number of clan groups are now returning to country and some of
these are considering future management possibilities including
formally recognised protected areas;
·
senior elders are now imparting traditional knowledge to younger
people whose families have been off country for a long time and
indigenous children are being exposed to indigenous rangers and
western scientists encouraging the study of western science at
school which incorporated into traditional knowledge lends this new
generation of scientists two “tool kits”;
·
Indigenous knowledge conservation programs collaborating with
groups such as researchers from ANU and Melbourne University;
·
Indigenous workers’ and landowners’ English language
skills are being improved through working with scientists and other
non-Aboriginal staff – this work is building
cross-cultural confidence that is essential if economic opportunity
in the area is to be taken up by Aboriginal people;
·
the Manwurrk Ranger group has formed Warddeken Land Management Pty
Ltd, a cultural and natural resource management organization that
aims to conserve and manage the plateau and generate income through
these activities; and
·
the on-ground fire management has involved the collaboration of a
number of indigenous ranger groups from across western Arnhem Land
which is already leading to improved social coordination with
regular meetings involving all these groups.
The future
This model of fire management to generate income is now being
applied across northern Australia – mainly in areas subject
to frequent wildfires with limited additional sources of income.
Four areas, largely on Indigenous owned land with high natural and
cultural values in the far north, have been identified (see pic
below). To build the governance, knowledge, skills and monitoring
framework needed to duplicate what the WALFA project has done will
take a few years and this capacity building is being coordinated by
NAILSMA using funds from the Federal Government.
