The Murrah Flora Reserve cultural burning program

September 2019

The Aboriginal Community Support Team

The Murrah Flora Reserve on the Far South Coast is part of the Cultural landscape of Biamanaga (Mumbulla Mountian). The Reserve is a sacred place of the Yuin people and is an important conservation habitat for the last significant koala population on the NSW South Coast.

The South East Local Land Services Aboriginal Community Support Team, collaborating with Traditional Owners, Local Aboriginal Land Councils, The Biamanga and Gulaga Boards of Management, The Firesticks Alliance^, The Department of Environment, Energy and Science and the Rural Fire Service, will run a three year project to develop a cultural burning program for the Reserve.

The project has several aims:

• To enhance positive relationships and build capacity within the cultural burning crews to develop a long-term cultural burning program that connects community back to country.
• To enhance healthy country and improve Koala habitat, by promoting Koala browse tree saplings as well as improve the health of parent browse trees that suffer from epicormic growth* with traditional fire.
• To protect threatened species habitat from wild fire by maintaining soil moisture within that landscape through traditional fire that will then suppress wild fire. Therefore provide an alternative approach to hazard reduction block burn methods.

Hazard reduction block burns are focused on reducing fuel loads per hectare. This leads to the concept of ‘burning for hectares’, where the outcome – reduced fuel load, is measured in area burnt – hectares.

This type of fire creates a lot of heat within the landscape, reduces soil moisture and changes the chemistry of that soil type. Once this happens the biodiversity, or vegetation type, will change within that area.

This can create a thick shrub layer of invasive native species – native species which would not be present under a traditional fire regime, so when wild fire does come through the thick shrub layer acts a ladder for flames to climb into the canopy of the trees (a crown fire) which creates a devastating wall of fire. This reduces the canopy allowing for more light to reach the ground and kickstart the invasive native shrub layer again.

Cultural burning is the traditional fire regime of Australia used for thousands of years before colonisation. Cultural burning methods are implemented with cool mosaic fire within different country types across the landscape. It is applied when indicators within that landscape emerge. By paying attention to these indicators, by listening to Country, we are then able to burn for Country and help restore it to health.

When we burn for Country the vegetation type that returns is that of its natural state. A thick knee high vegetation of different native grasses and herbs that will then maintain soil moisture which will then suppress wild fire. This is what we call healthy Country.

To find out more about the project or cultural burning in the South East contact Aboriginal Community Support Officer Dan Morgan at dan.morgan@lls.nsw.gov.au.

This project is funded through the NSW Government Environmental Trust Protecting our Places program.

Walawarni Safe Journey

*Epicormic growth is the growth of new shoots from buds that lie beneath the bark (epicormic buds). This kind of growth is a sign that the tree is in stress. Trees in epicormic growth will not flower or seed to reproduce. The woolybutt (Eucalyptus longifolia) is the favourite browse tree for Koalas. As a result of unhealthy country in the Murrah Flora Reserve the parent trees of the woolybutt suffer from epicormic growth. A key food source not reproducing is putting the long term sustainability of this fragile population of koalas at risk.

^The Firesticks Alliance is an Indigenous led network that aims to re-invigorate the use of cultural burning by facilitating cultural learning pathways to fire and land management. It is an initiative for people to look after Country, share their experiences and collectively explore ways to achieve their goals through an extensive and growing Community of Practice. Learn more at www.firesticks.org.au.