7,000 years of fire ecology on Kangaroo Island reveal colonial land mismanagement and Indigenous fire stewardship gaps
Original framing: “Lake mud reveals 7,000 years of Kangaroo Island's complex fire history” — Phys.org
Fire regimes on Kangaroo Island shifted dramatically after European settlement in the 1830s, with sediment records showing a 300% increase in fire frequency post-colonization. The Black Summer fires (2019–2020) were not unprecedented in scale but were the first to occur under modern climate conditions and degraded land management practices. Historical parallels include California’s 19th-century fire suppression policies, which led to the 2018 Camp Fire and other megafires.
The Black Summer fires on Kangaroo Island were not merely a climate-driven disaster but the result of centuries of colonial land mismanagement, including the suppression of Indigenous fire practices, the expansion of fire-prone eucalyptus monocultures, and the exclusion of Aboriginal communities from land management.
Sediment records reveal that fire regimes shifted abruptly after European settlement, yet restoration efforts continue to prioritize Western ecological models over Indigenous co-management. Globally, this pattern mirrors other fire-adapted landscapes, from California to the Amazon, where Indigenous knowledge has been systematically erased in favor of suppression-based policies. The solution lies in decolonizing fire management through co-management agreements, the phase-out of high-risk plantations, and the integration of Indigenous knowledge into future fire models. Without these systemic changes, Kangaroo Island—and similar regions—will remain trapped in a cycle of megafires and ecological degradation, where the land burns not because of climate change alone, but because of the failure to listen to those who have stewarded it for millennia.