Posted on 01/13/2020 7:11:27 PM PST by BenLurkin
Aboriginal people had a deep knowledge of the land, said historian Bill Gammage, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who studies Australian and Aboriginal history. They can feel the grass and know if it would burn well; they knew what types of fires to burn for what types of land, how long to burn, and how frequently.
Aboriginal techniques are based in part on fire prevention: ridding the land of fuel, like debris, scrub, undergrowth and certain grasses. The fuel alights easily, which allows for more intense flames that are harder to fight.
The Aboriginal people would set small-scale fires that weren't too intense and clear the land of the extra debris. The smaller intensity fires would lessen the impact on the insects and animals occupying the land, too, as well as protect the trees and the canopy.
Setting smaller, low-intensity fires to prevent larger bushfires may sound like common sense. In practice, though, it's really hard.
It comes down to knowledge, Gammage said. When do you a start a fire? What time of the year? What time of day? How long you want it to burn? What plants are there? What's the weather like — is there a drought like now?
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Wait there was global warming 50 thousand years ago?
Forestry techniques that were well known but forbidden due to idiotic environmental policy is “deep aboriginal knowledge”.
Hang every arsonist at the spot they are found. That’s the way they used to do it.
Might just work.
How could any PC puke say “no” to aboriginal practices?
Once again, the wisdom of the Aboriginal and their 'traditional practices'.
Naturally when white people in government suggest the same thing, the Eco Nazis protest and shut it down.
White man bad. Black man good."
I suspect liberals and the MSM are now going to jump on the prescribed burn bandwagon because they can now describe the practice as 'the wisdom of the Aboriginal people' and not the 'environmental destruction of the white man'.
“...ridding the land of Democrat debris, scrub, No-Term-Limit undergrowth and certain invasive Pelosis...”
America! The way forward, LOL! :)
The majority of bush/grass fires in Australia are caused by lightning, we even have a bird that picks up burning sticks and spreads the fire to flush out prey. The aboriginal people learned this trick from the bird, burning areas of land provided them with a portable larder.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/australian-raptors-start-fires-to-flush-out-prey
excerpt:
“Observers report both solo and cooperative attempts, often successful, to spread wildfires intentionally via single-occasion or repeated transport of burning sticks in talons or beaks. This behaviour, often represented in sacred ceremonies, is widely known to local people in the Northern Territory,” write the authors behind the find in the Journal of Ethnobiology.
Gosford points to two Dreaming fire ceremonies in particular – the Lorrkon and Yabuduruwa ceremonies from the Arnhem Land region of the Territory – which incorporate scenes involving the re-enactment of birds spreading fire from places to place.
Yes, sea levels went up by about 400 feet (ok, the ice age was ending so technically there was global warming).
The solution is no secret. Western civilization has no need of instruction from cave men.
Really? Florida does this every year.
What a shocking discovery!
Oops. CNN wasn’t supposed to tell everyone. This is the same primary reason for the level of fire damage in California. It’s illegal to prevent forest fires under governments which are insane/evil.
Deliberately setting fires?
Not letting nature grow wild and free?
Where do they get these ideas?
Greta will give them a stern lecture.
This is also the method employed by the Mi-Wok Indians in Norcal for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived.
Maybe thousands.
They actually had specialists.
At just the right time of the year, in just the right places, and within the context of the last decade of weather.
The Mi-Wok never got burned out of their huts. There are several examples of original huts standing that are 200 years old.
Nothing the Europeans built have stood for 200 years in the Sierra Foothills. And nearly nothing for the last 100 years.
California burns. Regularly.
So burn it with purpose.
Same with rice fields in Louisiana. Then, there are the sugar cane fields in Latin and South America.
Nobel or noble?
This is what you get when lawyers make one size fits all laws and that’s all they know how to make.
“I suspect liberals and the MSM are now going to jump on the prescribed burn bandwagon because they can now describe the practice as ‘the wisdom of the Aboriginal people’ and not the ‘environmental destruction of the white man’.
This practice isn’t new, For countless generations, Indigenous people have worked with fire to maintain healthy landscapes that are less prone to massive wildfires. While allowing natural fires to burn, Native Americans in California and elsewhere started some intentionally to clear dry brush, maintain species balance, and create prairies and meadows where animals graze. In the early days of Western settlement, some ranchers also adopted this practice to maintain pastureland for cattle.
It just changed in the late 1800’s. In the 1880’s, the US Army began to administer Yellowstone, the first national park, and developed the idea of “fighting” fire. In 1910, wildfires in Idaho and Montana burned millions of acres, destroying communities and killing 86 people. The US Forest Service subsequently adopted a policy of putting out all blazes, which state and federal land management agencies mimicked in an effort to protect timber supplies and human lives. Under these policies, Indigenous people and ranchers alike could be fined for burning their own lands.
So by not using the basic thoughts and proven successful practices of the American Indians, they caused millions of dollars of damage and many lives. So it wasn’t the fault of those that knew what to do. It was the stupidity of those who thought they were so much smarter.
rwood
I heard a theory one time that the Aborigines actually killed off Australia’s Megalania, a prehistoric giant monitor lizard, by setting and using wildfires. They supposedly would start the fire close to dawn while the big lizards were torpid with cold and couldn’t run away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalania
Supposedly the youngest fossil they have found dates to around 50,000 years ago. Which is supposedly right around the time the first Aborigines came to Australia.
Freegards
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