A recipe for belonging to northern Australia: The roles of traditional, scientific and adaptive ‘knowledge’ David Bowman Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management Northern Territory University

Sustainable development Depends on appreciating environmental realities Learning from hard won indigenous knowledge Undertaking research to create new knowledge ‘Adaptive management’ to perfect the application of different types of knowledge systems Ultimately, the development of a ‘land ethic’

Illustrate argument with the case of fire management in northern Australia

‘If you think knowledge is expensive try ignorance’ Native bamboo has flowered – a once in 40 year event

Creation of a fire hazard?

Government proposal to burn bamboo on riverlines Research has shown dead bamboo is difficult to burn So the attempted aerial burning program would have been a waste of money If the program had succeeded it would have –reduced the density of the regenerating bamboo –encouraged more flammable grasses exacerbating the fire management problem

Fire management regulations Despite sharing the same environment the laws concerning landscape fire use in Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia inconsistent The common aspect is the control of fire Burning in early dry season is favoured Fires late in the dry season typically prohibited

Regardless of the intent of the laws fires are lit in the late dry season few if any prosecutions rights of Aboriginal landscape burning uncertain

Aboriginal landscape burning

Arnhem Land study showed Burning was very patchy Concentrated in the second half of the dry season Contrary to the view that early dry season burning was a key characteristic of Aboriginal fire management

Grass – fire cycle Increased frequency of burning favours more flammable species A positive feedback Increase in biomass of native annual grasses like Sorghum The grass – fire cycle will accelerate with the spread of exotic Africa grasses like mission and gamba grass

The futility of fighting grass with fire

Fire management is everyone’s problem Recent work has shown a strong association between asthma and increasing bushfire smoke levels The grass – fire cycle will result in a significant public health impact given national air standards are already exceeded Nationally significant issue

Adaptive management Managers and ecologists think about landscapes at contrasting temporal and spatial scales Too much store placed in fire management ‘folklore’ Too many incoherent ecological details Inability to see ‘fuel’ as biodiversity Inability to see ‘biodiversity’ as fuel Critical evaluation is required to identify systems and interventions that work and those that don’t work Controlling the grass – fire cycle requires ‘learning by doing’ – adaptive management

A land ethic Aldo Leopold's ‘land ethic’ was based on three principles –People must have an ecological, historical and geographic appreciation of where they live –People must interact with landscapes such that landscape and humans have a shared history and memory of each other –The interaction between land and humans must be ethically based and socially moderated

Land ethics and adaptive management Remarkably similar to systems that regulated indigenous resource usage The landscape we seek to preserve was the creation of generations of indigenous peoples’ regulated labour Adaptive management will not only change the modes of management but the mentality of managers With a land ethic would we have introduced African pasture grasses?