Congratulating Associate-Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher on receiving a prestigious ARC grant

Congratulations to the Indigenous Knowledge Institute Director of Research Capability, Associate-Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher and his team on receiving a prestigious ARC grant under the Discovery Indigenous Scheme. This is a remarkable achievement and well done to everyone involved. Summary of the project funded follow.

Investigators: Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher; Dr Simon Connor; Dr Michela Mariani; Dr Yoshi Maezumi

Indigenous cultural burning has been raised as a way of mitigating against climate-driven catastrophic bushfires in southeast Australian forests. It is argued that returning an Indigenous style fire regime will keep landscape fuel loads low, thus reducing the frequency and intensity of bushfires and mitigating against large catastrophic bushfires. While based on enormous reservoirs of traditional fire knowledge in Indigenous communities, this assertion needs empirical testing within these highly flammable forests. This project aims to empirically test how fuel loads, fuel type, fire frequency and fire intensity have changed over the past 500 years in southeast Australian forests, spanning the period of indigenous to British management.