A tale of two sides of the highway: the impact of Indigenous regimes in the Barkly fires

Bushfire in the eastern Barkly region was downgraded over the weekend to an active blaze, but the 1.3-million-hectare fire scar provides a snapshot into the impact on landscapes with and without Indigenous fire management.

The Barkly blaze is one of many burning in the Northern Territory at the beginning of a fire season projected to be the territory’s worst since 2011. With predictions that as much as 80% of the territory is set to burn, it’s instructive to see the efficacy of Indigenous fire management.

“Compare the eastern side of the highway to the west where fire hasn’t run rampant in the same way,” Indigenous Desert Alliance partnerships manager Gareth Catt told Crikey. “You can see in mapping on NAFI [North Australia Fire Information] a lot of burning done in April, March, May, June on the western Tanami side. That is what’s impeding the spread of some of those fires.”

He pointed to the patchwork “mosaic” burns on the west in comparison to the large blanket burn on the east of the highway and said that while it’s early in summer and fires in the Barkly could prove to be more widespread, the difference in the two was stark.

The alliance has long worked with Land Owners, Indigenous ranger groups and the Central Land Council to burn land throughout the Tanami year-round as part of management of country. Although these fires have a similar look and feel to typical hazard reduction burns, Catt said the main difference was that they didn’t aim to burn large parts of country in one hit: “Cultural burns are about putting a lot of small fires into country. We look at landscape more broadly — vegetation types which can be enhanced through fire and areas most likely to ignite where we can reduce the likelihood of them burning.”

These fires are conducted through ground and aerial operations, with burn locations determined by Traditional Owners.

In the east, Catt said they’ve had no footprint due to pastoral land owners not wanting to engage in (and not providing access to) burns on their properties: “We haven’t been able to work in a constructive way on that side of the highway.”

Central Land Council CEO Les Turner told Crikey that the absence of adequate land care on country with excess fuel loads was to blame for the scale and scope of the blaze: “The Barkly fires are burning in native vegetation that has been subject to near-record rainfall. This is a natural event except that the country is largely unmanaged in the way that it would have when it was occupied with its Indigenous traditional owners.”

Turner said consecutive years of excess rainfall promoted growth of native and non-native vegetation that’s since cured in hot and dry conditions ripe for burning en masse. Many species have infiltrated river corridors and creek lines that previously acted as natural fire breaks.

The NT Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security told Crikey feedback from weeds officers fighting the fires confirmed fuel loads in the Barkly were “all native vegetation”. They said buffel grass — the invasive and highly flammable weed burning in the Tjoritja/West MacDonnell Ranges fires — was not present in the Barkly region and had no impact on the blaze.

Crikey requested an interview with both weed officers and remote operations personnel. The department responded: “Maybe, once they’re done fighting the fires.”

Based on intel from remote land care practitioners and ops workers, Crikey understands fuel loads in the area were 99% native vegetation, although buffel was present in “small amounts” in water systems, along roads and on pastoral leases. The lack of comprehensive buffel mapping in the area and inability to access farms was said to have prevented proper assessment of the scale and scope of buffel growth. The dominant species were spinifex and an acacia shrub called turpentine which, although native, had “overrun the landscape due to many years of overgrazing”.

The native bush thrives in disturbed soils common to pastoral lands. In short: many hoofs churn up the dirt and where other native species die off, turpentine dominates. It’s highly flammable and smells like turpentine.

“On a warm day you can see oils evaporating from the top,” one worker said.

Rohan Fisher from the landscape knowledge visualisation lab at Charles Darwin University, and part of the team that manages mapping inputs and outputs for NAFI, said that Australia’s fire focus was far too “southern centric”, despite 95% of fire events occurring up north.

“If you talk to anyone in southern Australia, the only fires that ever occurred were in 2019-20,” he said, adding that northern Australia is home to “the most amazing ecological success story in Australia over the past 20 years” — the reduced frequency of fires in an area of around 600,000 square kilometres due to Indigenous burning regimes.

“Indigenous people are doing some of the best fire management in the world. But the pyro-ecological literacy of Australia and Australians is just atrocious.”