However, there are many traditional practices which are still of great relevance to land and water management in Australia today.įire has been a key element in Aboriginal land management for millennia. e We need to understand our goals for land management: are we aiming to restore Australia as it was before colonisation, or Australia as it was before Aboriginal people arrived more than 50,000 years ago, before the end of the last ice age and complete with megafauna? 5 Realistically, we are aiming to achieve a new sustainable balance, acknowledging the land will never be the same as it was prior to colonisation.
It is important to remember that as humans, we have always lived within ecological systems, not outside them 4. European colonialism irrevocably changed the landscape to what it is today, with concerns over declining ecosystem health, unsustainable land and water management practices, numerous species on the brink of extinction, and climate change. The landscape has been shaped for many thousands of years by the presence and activities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but it was managed sustainably in a way that kept it thriving and healthy. It is possible that Aboriginal people arrived in Australia with existing sophisticated techniques of using fire in the landscape 1, as records indicate that Aboriginal people did not have a big negative impact on fire-sensitive plants 2, and the evidence suggests they were not responsible for the disappearance of the megafauna 3 as has been suggested in the past. Today, humans are an inextricable part of the landscape. the human element of Australian ecological systems, in particular the active role Indigenous Australians played in managing the landscape.in response to sea level rise or ice ages Ideas about a pristine ‘wilderness’ persist in popular imagination in Australia, including in the minds of ecologists and environmental conservationists. In an Australian context, this fails to take into account two key drivers:
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