Project Description

Fire, ancient landscapes and caring for Country

Reading the landscape before reaching for fire

From Sydney sandstone to south-western Australia’s ancient uplands, our first Understanding Vegetation Shifts webinar delivered a compelling reminder: there is no single recipe for managing ecological change.

What does good ecological management look like when the landscapes we’re working with have histories stretching back millions of years?

That question connected two very different presentations in AABR’s first Understanding Vegetation Shifts webinar.

Fire ecologist Mark Schuster took us into Sydney’s Hawkesbury sandstone, where fire management must balance biodiversity, ecological resilience and asset protection.

Professor Steve Hopper took us west, exploring some of the world’s oldest landscapes and what decades of research, alongside learning from Noongar Elders, can teach us about disturbance and caring for Country.

Fire in an ancient sandstone landscape

For Mark, vegetation shifts are an on-ground management challenge.

In Ku-ring-gai, highly biodiverse sandstone bushland sits right against urban development. These ancient ecosystems support a rich Proteaceae component, including species of Banksia, Hakea, Grevillea and Isopogon, as well as fauna with particular habitat and fire requirements.

Fire is part of these ecosystems. But fire is not simply fire.

Different species respond differently. Some resprout. Others are killed and regenerate from seed. Frequency matters, but so do intensity, season and soil moisture.

Mark’s goal is to maintain the capacity for vegetation communities to shift across the landscape, rather than allowing management to create hard boundaries between them.

That becomes tricky in fragmented urban bushland.

Tracks, weeds and nutrient enrichment can alter vegetation and fire behaviour. Some remnants are only a couple of hectares, making it much harder to achieve appropriate fire intensity while retaining refuges.

Mark’s approach is deliberately variable. Cooler burns. Moderate burns. Different intervals. Different timings.

And one particularly practical ingredient: appropriate soil moisture.

Enough intensity is needed to trigger responses such as opening seed-bearing structures in some Proteaceae, without unnecessarily carrying fire into the canopy.

Then comes the bit no ecological burn should be without.

Monitor, monitor, monitor.

A view from the west, and from deep time

Steve Hopper asked us to consider vegetation change on an even longer timescale.

His research in south-western Australia led to a striking observation. Many genuinely rare and threatened plants were concentrated on small upland features such as granite outcrops and lateritic mesas.

Why?

Steve’s work contributed to the development of the concept of old, climatically buffered, infertile landscapes, or OCBILs.

These are landscapes of extraordinary age and continuity. Their ancient, weathered and nutrient-poor environments have helped shape remarkable levels of biodiversity and endemism.

That deep history matters for restoration.

Ideas developed largely from younger, more frequently disturbed northern hemisphere landscapes don’t necessarily translate neatly to these ancient Australian systems.

Sometimes, Steve argues, the best intervention is very little intervention at all.

A changing climate changes the fire conversation

There was another important contrast between east and west.

While vegetation shifts on the east coast can involve increasingly mesic conditions in some landscapes, south-western Australia has experienced a strong drying trend.

Places that once remained wet throughout the year can now dry for months.

Steve showed the consequences of fire entering peat systems that historically acted as fire refuges. In one example, an escaped prescribed burn consumed around 60 centimetres to a metre of peat.

Peat that may have taken 5,000 to 10,000 years to form.

Ecological clocks can be reset very quickly.

Precision, not prescription

One of the most thought-provoking parts of Steve’s presentation came from his work with Noongar Elders, particularly Elder Lynette Knapp, and research by PhD student Ursula Rodrigues.

Steve described a very different approach to burning.

Small. Careful. Selective.

Adult trees were protected. Particular shrubs and herbs were deliberately left unburnt. Fire was applied at very fine scales and within a narrow seasonal window informed by Country, plants and rainfall.

Steve described it as precision fire.

Importantly, he did not suggest applying this approach uniformly across Australia. Quite the opposite.

Each community has its own requirements.

His advice to restoration practitioners was to build relationships with local Elders and listen to the knowledge held for that Country.

Minimum disturbance, maximum disturbance… or appropriate disturbance?

The Q&A brought the two presentations neatly together.

Bush regeneration has long embraced the principle of minimising disturbance. But, as facilitator Tein McDonald noted, perhaps the better idea is optimal disturbance.

Some ecosystems and species need disturbance to regenerate.

Others can be profoundly damaged by it.

The skill lies in knowing the difference.

That is also central to facilitated natural regeneration. Before assuming planting is required, practitioners can ask what regenerative capacity remains. Is there a soil seed bank? Are propagules present? Is a particular disturbance needed to trigger recovery? Or is removing the source of degradation and allowing natural regeneration the more appropriate intervention?

AABR’s definition of bush regeneration itself centres on utilising, reinstating and reinforcing an ecosystem’s ongoing natural regeneration processes.

Read first. Act second.

Mark and Steve came to vegetation shifts from different landscapes, different climates and different management contexts.

Yet their messages converged.

Know the Country you’re working with.

Understand its history, landform, species and regenerative processes.

Recognise that disturbance can help or harm.

Learn from monitoring. Learn from experience. And where First Nations knowledge holders are willing to share knowledge for that Country, listen.

Because good restoration isn’t about having a favourite intervention.

It’s about knowing when to intervene, how much, and when to leave well enough alone.

🎥 Watch Understanding Vegetation Shifts Part 1 on AABR’s regenTV.