Savanna burning–A cleaner future

Jeff Long, along with other Traditional Owners, wants to see Fish River in the Northern Territory become a showcase for cutting edge fire and land management techniques and provide jobs for his people.

Fish River is the first savanna burning project in Australia approved by the Clean Energy Regulator under the Carbon Farming Initiative to earn carbon credits.

It was recently featured in the Closing the Gap: Prime Minister’s Report 2013.

The management of Fish River’s significant natural and cultural heritage values is creating training and employment opportunities for local Indigenous people.

Jeff, a Larbaganyan man, sits on the Fish River Indigenous Advisory Group which provides advice and direction for the management of the property. He has also worked as a ranger on Fish River and understands the power of fire.

“Under the savanna burning project, rangers carry out controlled early season cool burns-offs so you don't get huge uncontrolled hot fires coming through in the late season.”

The end result is that thousands of tonnes of carbon are prevented from being released into the atmosphere.

The Indigenous Land Corporation acquired Fish River, a perpetual crown lease of 182,500ha in the Daly River region, in 2010, in collaboration with the Australian Government’s Caring for Our Country program, The Nature Conservancy and Pew Environment Group.

Central to the future of Fish River is the implementation of the Carbon Farming Initiative approved savannah burning methodology. This will secure an ongoing income stream to support Indigenous employment and training and management of the property into the future.

By using methods that draw on Indigenous pattern burning and science, the Indigenous Land Corporation savanna burning regime has dramatically reduced the intense, destructive late season fires on Fish River.

The area that had been historically burned by wildfires each year has been reduced from 69 per cent to around 50 per cent. The area burnt by destructive, late season fires has been reduced from 35 per cent to less than three per cent.

In association with the Northern Australia Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, the lessons learned at Fish River will be passed on to assist many other Indigenous groups across northern Australia to set up accredited savanna burning projects under the Carbon Farming Initiative,  to establish sustainable income streams and increase Indigenous employment in land management.