Indigenous cultural burning managed Australia’s bushfires long before colonisation. It’s needed now more than ever, a study says

‘Once Europeans come in and Indigenous populations are displaced from their land, then fires come back in a big way,’ study co-author Dr Simon Connor said. Photograph: Adam Ballard/DFES

Indigenous cultural burning practices halved the shrub cover across south-east Australia thousands of years before colonisation, reducing the intensity of bushfires, new research suggests.

The study’s authors argue that “wide-scale re-integration” of cultural burning practices, in combination with western fire management techniques, is “crucial” at a time when wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense due to the climate crisis.