Cultural burning, a practice developed and sustained by Aboriginal Australians for tens of thousands of
years, offers an ecologically grounded land management strategy that contrasts with the hazard
reduction burns typical of post-colonial fire regimes in Australia. These Indigenous-led burns are lowintensity, country-specific and embedded within the broader cultural and ecological knowledge systems
of each landscape and community.
Recent studies have shown that cultural burns significantly improve soil health, retaining higher moisture
and nutrient levels, moderating pH and reducing compaction compared to agency-led burns
(Murramarang Country et al. 2024). These outcomes point to cultural burning as a potentially critical
mechanism for long-term landscape management in Australia.
This project aims to build on this foundation by investigating the broader ecological benefits of cultural
burning across a range of sites and communities, with a focus on soil ecosystem recovery, vegetation
succession and biodiversity. This research will contribute to fire ecology and sustainable land
management while establishing and deepening partnerships with Aboriginal land managers and
integrating cultural knowledge and western scientific methods through a co-designed research
approach.
It will achieve this aim by quantifying changes in soil health metrics over time following cultural burns and
prescribed burns at multiple sites. It will also assess the influence of cultural burning on vegetation
regeneration, species composition and ecosystem recovery. We will compare outcomes between cultural
burns and hazard reduction burns. The research will work collaboratively with Local Aboriginal Land
Councils and Traditional Custodians to align cultural knowledge with ecological indicators of
healthy Country.
