Introduction

Throughout last year, extremely destructive fires raged throughout Australia and the Western United States. Great monetary and human resources have been diverted to fighting these fires, but to lead to a more sustainable future there must be an emphasis on fire prevention instead. This is especially crucial in areas currently suffering from intense and frequent fires, as climate change will only continue to worsen the consequences. To develop the best fire management strategies, Indigenous Knowledge (IK) should be considered. By living off the land for centuries, Indigenous peoples were able to pass down knowledge about their environments to each subsequent generation. This IK contains strategies as to how to best maintain sustainable fire regimes that they have developed over centuries. In order to demonstrate this, two case studies will be presented: one of the Martu in Western Australia, and one of the Native Americans in the Southwestern United States. The fire regimes of the two groups will be explored using a historical ecology framework, showing how both construct niches through burning, which increases which increases biodiversity and the productivity of the land. While it is clear through these case studies that fire thus can be beneficial when applied appropriately, fire suppression still remains the customary practice in modern culture and IK is often ignored. This is explored using a political ecology framework, which looks at the social, economic, and political issues that still exist when attempting to implement IK. Furthermore, it is also important to discuss how IK and prescribed burning cannot be applied to every situation, but management must be adaptive to location and current climate change. Overall, this paper argues that IK must be consulted for adaptive fire management to be effective and sustainable. 

 

Background on Fire Regimes

Natural fires have existed for at least 400 million years, shaping biomes and affecting plant and animal evolution (Bowman et al. 2011). The majority of these fires are started by lightning, which require dehydrated or dry vegetation that burns at 325ºC (Scott 2000). If lightning strikes this vegetation, it will heat it above this threshold and ignite. From here, oxygen is needed for the fire to continue. While natural fires do continue today, human-set or anthropogenic fires emerged at least by the last Ice Age during the Middle Pleistocene, affecting the environment around them in a dynamic way. To best understand the relationship between humans and their environment in regard to fire use, historical ecology can be used as a framework. To reconstruct historic fire regimes, palaeoecological proxies and historic sources are used, such as: remote sensing, tree rings, micro- and macro-charcoal, isotope chemicals, and written sources. As shown in Figure 1, each of these sources have differing benefits depending on the timescale and location of study. For example, looking one thousand years ago, using tree rings would be appropriate to reconstruct a local fire regime, but micro-charcoal would be better suited for regional fire regimes. Natural and human fires are distinguished from one another by looking for a change in fire activity over space or time that is not predicted by the climate-fuel-fire relationship. For example, if it is known that a particular location in a point of time was warm and dry, but there was very little vegetation and fuel there would be an expected low prevalence of fires in the area. If the reconstructed fire regime instead shows a high prevalence of fires, this does not align with predictions and suggests human alteration of the fire regime. For a fire to be determined as anthropogenic, the change in fire regime must be accounted for by coinciding with a temporal or spatial change in human history – whether this be changes in demography, humans arriving in the area, development of new technology, etc. These data sets are synthesized to demonstrate the relative dominance of natural vs. anthropogenic fire over time. In the last 2000 years, charcoal analysis demonstrates that human fire activity had a more dominant effect on the environment than natural fires, as global charcoal levels changed primarily based on human burning of forests in the Americas, Europe, and Australia. Especially with the last 300 years of industrialization, human fires undoubtedly are a driving force in altering the environment with the burning of forests and fossil fuels (Bowman et al. 2011). 

Figure 1: Summary of historical sources and palaeoecological proxies for reconstructing historic fire regimes (Bowman et al. 2011).

Once anthropogenic fire is introduced, it can be used as a tool for niche construction and managing land over periods of time. Fire depends on three vital ingredients: oxygen, heat, and fuel (Bowman et al. 2011). Humans can alter different aspects of these ingredients, resulting in different fire regimes. As shown in Figure 2, the effect of these changes can be visualized in triangular schematic models called pyric phases. This model illustrates how changes to the three ingredients of fire can create new fire regimes. This transition from one regime to another is called a pyric transition. The main way in which humans can alter the fire regime is by altering fire intensity. Fire intensity is a measure of the amount of heat (measured in Watts) released per meter of the fire front. Low to moderate fires have an intensity of less than 3000 kW/m, whereas high intensity fires are any values above 3000 kW/m (Alexander and Cruz 2018). As this value is calculated from the heat of combustion, amount of fuel consumed, and rate of fire spread, the alteration of fuel and heat by humans alters the fire intensity.

Figure 2: Visual representation of pyric phases, demonstrating how changing oxygen, fuel and/or heat can lead to a pyric transition (Bowman et al. 2011).

The ecosystem in which humans burn becomes adapted to the new anthropogenic fire regimes. This leads to co-evolution, which alters the prevalence and distribution of plant and animal species in the area. This is done as a form of intensification, which can be defined as the increasing of resource productivity and efficacy (Bird et al. 2016). Disturbances such as fire or predation may at first appear to have negative consequences on an ecosystem, when in reality they can intensify short- and long-term returns. The collective impacts of fire regimes are encompassed by Bowman and Legge’s interpretation of Martin and Sapsis’ term “pyrodiversity”, looking especially at food webs and biodiversity (Bowman and Legge 2016). In terms of food webs, fire affects all trophic levels differently and allows for dynamic interactions as fire regimes are changed. For example, the sudden introduction of high intensity fires can affect predation practices. Burning reduces the amount of vegetation available as a primary food source, and thus larger mammals will begin to hunt more small/medium sized mammals. The use of fire for intensification and niche construction also affects biodiversity, which is the variety of species in a particular ecosystem. With the same example, the presence of high intensity fires decreases biodiversity as diverse plant mosaics are burnt off and the numbers of small/medium mammals decline (Bowman and Legge 2016). Low intensity burning patterns, on the other hand, have been found to lead to a heterogeneous mosaic of vegetation, supporting a wider diversity of species (Bird et al. 2016). Since each species has an important role to play, maintaining biodiversity is crucial for a stable, healthy ecosystem. Throughout the following two case studies, niche construction and intensification will be used as a way to assess and understand the effects of different fire management techniques.

 

Martu in Western Australia

Human foraging has been an important practice for at least 36,000 years in Australia. Many Aboriginal foragers were forcibly relocated by the government in the 1950s-1970s out of the desert to missions and reserves, but in the 1980s some groups returned (Bird et al. 2013). The Martu are a group of Aboriginal peoples that returned to the deserts in 1984 after a 20-year absence, with the main communities today being a part of a 13.6-hectare determination in Western Australia (Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa n.d.). Once arriving back on their land, the Martu re-established their traditional burning practices for the purpose of hunting. Because the desert does not easily provide many resources for the Martu, they must intensify their land in some way to support their population. They utilize a low-intensity mosaic patch burning technique that serves to effectively burn off hummock grass to aid in tracking small animals. Prey is “hunted with fire in the winter and tracked in recently burned ground in the summer” (Bird et al. 2016). Since burns are completed during the winter and dry season, these fires are much cooler and easier to control. While the fires are contained by natural barriers such as trails or desert areas where there is no fuel, the Martu continue to carefully monitor the low flames and are prepared to extinguish them. This technique of burning leads to a finer-grained successional mosaic, with each patch in a different stage of regrowth, as seen in Figure 3 and 4 (Bird et al. 2013).

Figure 3: Land in Western Australia without controlled burning where lightning fires have cleared the land (Gattuso 2020)

Figure 4: Land in Western Australia after the Martu resumed controlled burning, creating a patchy mosaic of vegetation (Gattuso 2020)

The emergent constructed ecosystem is beneficial both to the Martu and other species. Habitat quality and diversity increases in anthropogenic constructed areas, with highly heterogeneous patches being created. Many species prefer this patchy landscape; for example, kangaroos and wallabies have increased access to high-quality successional forage and sand monitor lizards prefer habitat edges readily found between patches (Bird et al. 2016; Bird et al. 2013). Because of the increased biodiversity and prey density in anthropogenically modified regions, the Martu are more efficient in their hunting as they spend approximately 10% less time searching for prey (Bird et al. 2016). While at first it may appear as though increased hunting would be detrimental to biodiversity, this is not the case. Rather, the Martu achieved higher kcal per hour return rates in regions of intermediate hunting intensity (Bird et al. 2016). Increasing hunting in a certain location leads to the introduction of anthropogenic fire, creating favorable environments for prey. In the case of the sand monitor lizard, there is little difference in population density when comparing burned plots with heavy hunting and burned plots with no hunting. This suggests that for the lizards, the negative effects of hunting are offset by the net positive effects of the human constructed niche (Bird et al. 2013). Thus, low-intensity mosaic burning leads to a beneficial positive feedback loop for both predator (humans) and prey. Furthermore, low intensity anthropogenic burning reduces the frequency and size of fires. The finer-grained successional mosaic created by the Martu prevents the spread of large fires as fuel is less consistent. 

The Martu and other Aboriginal peoples hold this knowledge about human-environment relations in what is called the Dreaming or Jukurrpa. This body of knowledge is understood as ‘Law’ and passed down between generations. It emphasizes that in order for life to continue, fire must be used to manage the country as the plants and animals that are hunted and gathered “depend on their actions” (Bird et al. 2013). Jukurrpa demonstrates that conservation is conceived as a two-way interaction between humans and the environment to the Aboriginal peoples. In this way, it can be understood that humans are a keystone species, having a disproportionately important role in managing the environment for other species. Just during the 20-years the Martu were not in the desert, mean fire size increased by over 800% to 52000 hectares, approximately 15 species went extinct, and 43 species severely declined (Bird et al. 2013). It is evident that the Martu’s practice of mosaic burning is crucial to sustaining the environment in Western Australia as it intensifies ecosystem productivity, increases biodiversity, and reduces the intensity of potentially destructive fires.

 

Native Americans in the Southwestern US

The Yurok, Karuk, Hupa, Miwok, Chumash and hundreds of other tribes in the Southwest of the United States also used fire as an intensification tool for 13,000 years prior to European colonization (Cagle 2019). In the past, colonial-centric ideas shaped the belief that these fires did not have a great impact on the environment. However, information today suggests otherwise. Lightning-ignited fires were relatively infrequent in the area and could not account for the amount of burning seen in the palaeoecological record. This increase in fire prevalence coincides with the pre-Columbian increased density of Native Americans in the South when compared to other areas in the West, with only 5% of land being unused (Keeley 2002). High density populations put pressure on the natural environment which was dominated by shrublands and pines. Shrublands do not provide many easily accessible resources and are weakly resilient to fire. Thus, without agriculture, the burning of shrublands and forests was the best method to intensify the land. In order to control burns in both the shrublands and the forest, conditions had to be met including low wind, dry vegetation, and little humidity. Boundaries were also set beforehand by clearing paths of at least three feet around the area to be burned so the fire would not spread (Cagle 2019). The fires are set along one edge of the patch, and move across as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Crissy Robbins and son Kenneth Koy-o-woh of the Yurok tribe in front of a controlled burn moving across a designated patch in the California forest (Cagle 2019)

In the shrublands, the low-intensity surface burning carried out by Native Americans created a grassland/shrubland mosaic. Burning created a much more efficient ecosystem, allowing for greater access to deer, hares, quail, and mourning doves who prefer grasslands. Additionally, low intensity burning served to reduce the foliage surrounding seeds and bulbs, making these resources easier to access (Keeley, 2002). On the other hand, burning aided in eliminating species more dangerous to humans since bears and rattlesnakes prefer lush shrubland. Furthermore, because shrublands consume more water than grasslands, reducing the amount of shrubland through burning increased flow from watersheds, with a 475% increase in summer flow in areas that had been converted to grassland (Keeley 2002). Thus, grassland and burnt shrubland mosaics maximized heterogeneity, biodiversity, and access to water resources. This was an intensification process, since Native Americans constructed a more productive niche suited to their needs. Relying on natural fires would not be enough to maintain these environments, and instead repeated seasonal burning was required. With the increase of fire suppression in these mosaic regions, shrub ‘invasion’ has been observed, correlating with a decrease in biodiversity (Keeley 2002).

In the forests, Native Americans also used low intensity surface fires as a land intensification tool to maintain a more efficient ecosystem. Burning decreased fuel loads and tree densities, and increased numbers of fire-resistant trees. This served to reduce the risk of high-intensity crown fires, which are fires that burn from treetop to treetop rather than on the ground. Crown fires are extremely dangerous as they spread more quickly and are harder to control and extinguish. Similar to the other environments mentioned, burning increased biodiversity as different types of surface vegetation, such as the water chestnut and huckleberries, were able to grow with higher access to sunlight and nutrients in the ashes. More heterogeneous vegetation and forage supported a wider variety of wildlife as well, attracting important game species such as deer back into these areas (Armatas et al. 2016). Selective burning over millennia led to a more productive environment with increased fire resistance. With the increase of fire suppression, biodiversity has decreased, and natural fires have increased in intensity and frequency (Armatas et al. 2016).

Native American tribes in the Southwest--and throughout the United States--hold cultural knowledge about this burning. Low-intensity surface fires are known as ‘good fire’ and ‘medicine’ that are “not just healing [their] lands, it’s healing [their] people” (Cagle 2019). These tribes in general view fire as an essential management technique when they tend to their land, something they made an agreement with their Creator to do. The burn itself has cultural value, as exemplified by the Yurok tribe in California, where a tribe member speaks to the Creator while igniting: “Creator, we are here today to do work for the land, for the people. Give us guidance, clarity of mind, purity, and we may carry this out with the best intentions” (Cagle 2019). While this is only one example, cultural practices such as these are utilized by tribes throughout the Southwestern United States. Much like the Martu, burning is seen as a two-way interaction between humans and the environment. Therefore to maintain these more productive ecosystems, some form of low intensity burning is required.

 

Current Management Strategies

Current strategies of fire management do not take IK into account, meaning that many of these low-intensity fires throughout Western Australia and the Southwestern United States stopped with European colonization. Fire suppression by European colonists was based on ethnocentrism and differing perceptions of fire. European colonizers believed Indigenous peoples to be ‘primitive’ and ‘pre-civilized’, and thus believed it was their right to ‘help’ them modernize. At the time of colonization, Europeans also believed that it was the right of humans to be in control of nature, including fire. Since they saw fire only as a destructive tool, they implemented suppression of Indigenous burning; however, this has had detrimental consequences. This rapid switch of pyric phases led to increased flammable vegetation and fuel loads where there are higher densities of humans. This led to more intense and destructive natural fires, rather than low-intensity surface fires that were set by Indigenous peoples (Bowman et al. 2011). As climates continue to get warmer and drier in many areas, it is predicted that fires will only get more frequent, intense, and widespread. This leads to a feedback loop where fires continue to worsen along with public conception of them. Consequently, most funds are allocated to firefighting technologies, rather than fire prevention (Helvarg 2019). For example, state and federal agencies spent more than $3 billion on firefighting in California in 2020, whereas $165 million designed to be allocated to protection and prevention fell to less than $10 million (Boxall 2020). As a result, political control and social conceptions of fire allow for current fire suppression strategies to maintain support.

Looking into the future, fire management strategies should turn to IK to create more sustainable, biodiverse and stable environments. In many cases, fire suppression has failed because it has been a top-down conservationist approach where IK was not considered. In Australia, Aboriginals inhabit 20% of Australian land mass and have accumulated knowledge about how to sustain these ecosystems over hundreds of generations (Ens et al. 2012). As shown in the case studies above, anthropogenic burning is beneficial to environments where coevolution with humans has occurred. In these areas, humans are in essence a keystone species that are required to maintain an efficient ecosystem. Some groups, such as Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Fire Forward program in California, have begun to apply “prescribed fires”, mimicking Indigenous fire regimes with low-intensity anthropogenic burning (Helvarg 2019). This program has gained broad based support, with more than 100 local volunteers having signed up to be trained in basic controlled burning techniques alongside local law enforcement and firefighters. The Fire Forward program has partnered with private landowners to burn on their lands as well (Helvarg 2019). In areas where anthropogenic fire has been reintroduced, fire intensity and frequency has reduced, with biodiversity increasing (Stan et al. 2014). As Western Australia, the Southwestern US, and other areas around the globe continue to be more vulnerable to destructive wildfires, using IK to implement low-intensity anthropogenic burning is more pertinent than ever.

However, there are still many obstacles encountered when trying to implement IK. These issues can best be understood through a political ecology framework, looking at political, economic and social factors. Socially, attitudes towards anthropogenic burning are mixed. As fires get more intense and disastrous, this creates “negative public attitudes towards landscape fires, despite the need for burning to sustain some ecosystems” (Bowman et al. 2011). On the other hand, Helge Eng from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention (CAL FIRE) has noted that in regard to preventing fires through low intensity burning “people are looking to their own backyards, and so we’re seeing broad-based support from the public” (Helvarg 2019). Moreover, IK and non-IK have different philosophies regarding conservation. For example, Ens et al. (2012) and Cagle (2019) demonstrate western scholars view conservation as a one-way interaction where humans induce changes in the environment, whereas Aboriginals and Native Americans view conservation as a two-way interaction between people and the environment. This combination of mixed attitudes and difference in philosophies leads to tension or misunderstanding and makes it more difficult to reach a consensus on future management strategies. 

Use of IK can also be hampered economically as there often is not enough funding for fire prevention services.  For example, CAL FIRE hoped to treat all forests in the state with prescribed fires but estimate with their current funding and manpower they would only be able to complete 1 out of the 33 million acres by 2025 (Helvarg 2019). The average cost to implement prescribed burns in this area is $86 per acre, or $2.8 billion to treat all 33 million acres; they are allocated $10 million (Donovan 2004; Boxall 2020). Without appropriate funds, prescribed burning guided by IK cannot be implemented. In the case that there is funding allocated to Indigenous burning efforts, a top-down approach is used where Indigenous peoples have very few opportunities to provide input. In these cases, Indigenous peoples may have a lack of control, leading them to feel disempowered (Ens et al. 2012). 

There are also numerous political issues. For example, misunderstandings within the Australian government itself have led to lack of implementation of controlled burns. The Australian Greens advocate for more action on climate change, whereas other parties contest that the Greens were not in favor of prescribed burns. The Greens deny this statement, yet tensions made it less likely controlled burns would be considered (Reality Check Team 2020). Even when IK is included, such as through the Caring for Our Country Program and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, Indigenous peoples are still not always consulted or supported at all stages (Ens et al. 2012). Thus, numerous social, economic and political issues have hampered the use of IK and implementation of anthropogenic burns.

 

Future Management Strategies

In order to combat these issues and implement IK, cross cultural exchanges must be encouraged to allow both sides to understand the point of view of the other. Because they are all experts in their own regard, Indigenous peoples need to be involved with all stages of conservation, as their knowledge is critical in developing the best strategies that will work in each environment. The general public can be educated using IK about the benefits of using fire as not a tool for destruction, but land management. Additionally, they can be educated about the Indigenous peoples that cared for these lands before them and carried out these practices. Due to the historic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, they note how being treated with respect and dignity today, as well as honoring promises of being involved, is of utmost importance in building trust and strong relationships (The Red Road n.d.). Without the input of Indigenous leaders throughout the process of controlled burning, they will not be successful. Indigenous peoples also need to be empowered on all levels, allowing them to lead burns and be supported economically and politically. As a result, these strategies could allow IK to be better utilized to develop the best fire management strategies. 

It is also important to note these management strategies must be adaptive. While IK about historical fire regimes is crucial, in order for them to be effective today they must be adapted to each environment and with regard to climate change. This means that over time, anthropogenic fires may need to be modified in terms of how or when they are practiced. Since prescribed burns require cooler and drier weather, the time of year in which a burn is practiced may have to change over time to match optimal conditions. For example, in the Californian forests current Native American burning occurs at the same frequency and intervals as historic anthropogenic regimes but are different in that they occur later in the year. This is because warming climates have meant that it is only cool enough for fires to be safe later in the year. Adaptive management is more effective in this way since historical practices were changed to fit current conditions with climate change (Stan et al. 2014; Reality Check Team 2020). This also means adapting to different locations to create the lowest carbon dioxide output possible by limiting high intensity fires that release the most carbon dioxide. For example, fires in rainforests are primarily anthropogenic so they could be suppressed, but high intensity fires in Australia can be reduced with controlled burning (Bowman et al. 2011). Others such as Keeley and Fortheringham (2002) have shown that fire suppression would not lead to increased fires in moderate weather conditions. Thus, to lead to a future where biodiversity and sustainability are maximized, low-intensity fires should not just be the blanket solution. Rather, IK should be used to inform which practices are most effective for each environment.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, fire management of the future will be most effective if IK is used to inform practices. This is especially important in areas in which Indigenous peoples traditionally would start low-intensity surface fires, constructing a more productive and biodiverse ecosystem. Both of the case studies provided are from such areas. The fires in these areas today have proven to be extremely destructive and require immediate attention, especially as they will only become more frequent and intense with climate change. Fire suppression in these areas is ineffective as a fire management strategy as these environments require human intervention to maintain the healthiest biosphere. Therefore, prescribed burning should be applied, as guided by Indigenous peoples. These peoples must be involved throughout the conservation process, acting in key leadership roles. However, it is also important to note that prescribed burning in these environments is not a general solution to fire management everywhere. Management must adapt historical IK to location and current climates--placing prescribed burning and fire suppression strategically. In the future, if fire management is to be effective, sustainable, and promote biodiversity, IK should be consulted.

 

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