G'day Laurie,
With the utmost respect, on this issue, I've got to take the other side of this
important conservation crisis, and suggest that if you haven't visited Kakadu
in the past five or six years, you might be in for a shock when you next search
for ground-dwelling fauna of any sort - particularly reptiles and small
mammals. It would be hard to find a burn scar less than 10-fold the figure you
have quoted. In fact, it can be a challenge to find an area that size that
HASN'T been burned in past few years. Instead of a 'mosaic' approach based on
allowing proper maturing of the rapidly receding spinifex habitats to reach
maturity, the current management process in Kakadu is to apply 'mosaic' burns
to any areas that have been spared far less time than required to see return of
complex ecologies including long-lived reptiles (and presumably grass wrens).
In short, the traditional burning by nomadic tribes was not assisted by Cessna
'blanket' fire-drops, Toyotas and automatic lighters.
Content preview: G?day Martin Are you suggesting that Aborigines haven?t been
lighting fires at Kakadu for thousands of years or that traditional fires
are hot burns? You might like to read the article. The point of the article
is that "Martu-set fires average about 10 acres -- a small fraction of the
size of fires ignited by lightning ... that patchy vegetation created by
intentional fires reduce the likelihood of devastating, large blazes.? [...]
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Subject: A study of the conservation benefits of
indigenous Australian land management practices
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John Weigel AM
Australian Reptile Park
PO 737 Gosford NSW 2250
(02) 4340 1022
www.reptilepark.com.au
www.devilark.com.au
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