Charlotte Varcoe
THE integration of First Nations knowledge and practices will be put into practice by Burrandies Aboriginal Corporation after it secured two grants to help with fire management.
The corporation received about $500,000 of funding from two grant applications to help with future fire prevention programs.
One program will be a pilot initiative and facilitate the coming together of processes and assessments used by various agencies.
It will develop a Limestone Coast Roadside Management Strategy with a focus on First Nations knowledge and practices.
The second grant will allow Burrandies to purchase a truck or vehicles to assist with fire management including a loader mulcher.
Burrandies Aboriginal Corporation acting chief executive Tara Bonney said the mulcher would allow for long term Caring for Country activities including weed minimisation removal.
“If we are doing woody weed removal, which is the removal of trees, staff currently go in with hand saws and dabbing,” Ms Bonney said.
“The areas are sometimes too dense and it would take hundreds of man hours so if we can go in with a load mulcher it would mulch it all down which means staff can go through and dab whatever springs back.”
She said having the mulcher was a “more viable option” for places such as forestry and private forestry industries and allowed staff to conduct a job in one day rather than over a long period of time.
Ms Bonney said there was also the possibility of purchasing a small truck which a water loader could be put onto to use alongside the Country Fire Service (CFS) yet was dependent on further conversations with businesses.
“The second grant is really exciting and although it is smaller there is a lot more promise to it,” she said.
“The whole concept is to work with council and private organisations, government and non-government agencies to manage roadsides.”
She said the pilot project would look at one or two areas within each council’s region across the Limestone Coast while also giving the crew opportunities for upskilling.
“We are looking at doing fuel load assessments, asset assessments and then the crew will go out and look at what is fuel, fire load risks and asset risks,” she said.
“Councils will be choosing areas which are difficult to manage using slashing and the other things they do.”
She said the initial idea behind the project was to also implement cultural burning techniques in the long term.
“The fuel reduction will include getting rid of weeds and clearing dead wood and then we may do a cool burn,” she said.
“There have been a couple of areas in the region which have undergone cold burns on roadsides so part of this is we will be looking at how that has bounced back.
“The whole idea is that we can try and reduce weeds and get native grass instead which burns cooler.”
As well as cultural burning, Ms Bonney said the aim of the project was to protect environmental assets including financial, legal and cultural assets.
“This means making sure those areas are protected and that we have big buffer zones where we have got native species a bit like fire retardant which also does not burn as hot,” she said.
“That way it gives the opportunity to make sure staff can get in and stop the fire from spreading.”
She said the biggest challenge would be finding a fire crew and having consistent staff with the capacity to go and fight fires.
According to Ms Bonney, cultural burns – also known as cool burns – were different to prescribed burns with its goal being about protecting environmental assets as a whole and noticing the environment, where animals lived and avoiding those areas.
She said it was about “seeing everything” within the environment as important and sustaining the ecosystem.
“By burning it too hot you can cause problems later on so you need to make sure you are looking at the entire environment,” she said.
“Cultural burns also naturally have a mosaic burn which means some areas will burn completely and others will burn partially while some areas will not burn at all.
“Prescribed burns can intentionally do mosaic burns but they will go into patches rather than letting it happen naturally and with cultural burns you also give a timeline for food production and it moves slower so it gives animals more time to move away.”
Excited to start the cultural burning journey, Ms Bonney said some areas may be more difficult than others to complete the project with other works needing to be done beforehand.
“There are going to be some areas that are going to be ready to have a cultural burn go through,” she said.
“We will also be linking in some of our soil science so we will be able to show farmers and private industries that by using cultural burning the soil is going to improve as well as the carbon capture.”
