Press

Australia’s desert country is rarely part of the global climate conversation despite it being home to the world’s oldest continuing culture, and the largest connected conservation corridor on Earth.

While there is worry and the doom and gloom about the environment and climate change, I want to also highlight the positive - the passion that Aboriginal people have for caring for the environment and knowing that we can heal - we need support in doing that.

The Black Summer mega-blazes destroyed lush forest and drove high-profile species, including greater gliders and koalas, closer to extinction, but the larger desert fires are also causing devastation – there’s just fewer people out there to witness them. Chantelle Murray from the Indigenous Desert Alliance, a group that advocates for the health of central Australia and the people who live there, told Yahoo the huge blazes are a “huge threat” to the country.

In 2023, more than 294,000 km²—about 41 per cent of Australia’s northern spinifex deserts—were engulfed by fire during spring, following unusually high rainfall. That’s nearly three times the annual norm of 15 percent. These vast fires at times advanced rapidly, covering over 25,000 km² in just five days. However, in areas where Indigenous ranger-led fire management had been implemented, the spread of fire was interrupted by recently prescribed burns, highlighting the growing effectiveness of large-scale, culturally informed fire management in mitigating megafire risk.

When Christine Ellis was young, she would watch her mother cooking with an open fire in the Tanami Desert. One meal she remembers being prepared was warrarna, the Warlpiri name for a great desert skink (Liopholis kintorei). Measuring up to 44 centimetres long, these desert lizards can be coloured like a sunset, with bright orange back scales that transition to a yellow belly. … But the lizard is no longer eaten for fears it could go extinct. ‘Now we look after them [warrarna],’ Ms Ellis said.

Wanda Miller, IDA Director spoke with the Guardian Australia about buffel grass taking over desert Country. She said “it’s changing the landscape, it’s killing native plants and wildlife, it’s changing the fire patterns across Country and increasing the risk and intensity of bushfires. We need support to get our healthy Country back and the next step is recognising buffel as a weed of national significance to help our communities get better support for fighting this dangerous weed.”

On the Kiwirrkurra Indigenous Protected Area in a remote part of Western Australia, Kiwirrkurra rangers have been caring for bilbies (ninu) by hunting cats and conducting right-way fire. Recently, as part of a three-year trial, rangers conducted aerial baiting for the first time, deploying 20,000 baits to control feral predators. The area they chose for baiting was too far from the community to manage cats with traditional hunting, and has few dingoes due to the lack of permanent water.

"When fire is carefully applied to the landscape, it's not a destructive force, it's a renewing force. If you time that fire correctly and interact with the landscape consistently, fire is much more a tool for promoting vegetation diversity and new growth." – Gareth Catt, Indigenous Desert Alliance