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New research in Arnhem Land reveals why institutional fire management is inferior to cultural burning

<p>One of the conclusions of this week’s shocking <a href="https://soe.dcceew.gov.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">State of the Environment report</a> is that climate change is lengthening Australia’s bushfire seasons and raising the number of days with a fire danger rating of “very high” or above. In New South Wales, for example, the season now extends to almost eight months.</p> <p>It has never been more important for institutional bushfire management programs to apply the principles and practices of Indigenous fire management, or “cultural burning”. As the report notes, cultural burning reduces the risk of bushfires, supports habitat and improves Indigenous wellbeing. And yet, the report finds:</p> <blockquote> <p>with significant funding gaps, tenure impediments and policy barriers, Indigenous cultural burning remains underused – it is currently applied over less than 1% of the land area of Australia’s south‐eastern states and territory.</p> </blockquote> <p>Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-12946-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent research</a> in <em>Scientific Reports</em> specifically addressed the question: how do the environmental outcomes from cultural burning compare to mainstream bushfire management practices?</p> <p>Using the stone country of the Arnhem Land Plateau as a case study, we reveal why institutional fire management is inferior to cultural burning.</p> <p>The few remaining landscapes where Aboriginal people continue an unbroken tradition of caring for Country are of international importance. They should be nationally recognised, valued and resourced like other protected cultural and historical places.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">Different indigenous fire application today with a country full of weeds. First burn of of two applications this year. This is what we have to do to make country have less flammable vegetation. Walk through, More time and love put into country. <a href="https://t.co/pnoWFQbq6C">pic.twitter.com/pnoWFQbq6C</a></p> <p>— Victor Steffensen (@V_Steffensen) <a href="https://twitter.com/V_Steffensen/status/1505384041402748930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2022</a></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Ancient fire management</strong></p> <p>The rugged terrain of the Arnhem Plateau in Northern Territory has an ancient human history, with archaeological evidence <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-07-20/aboriginal-shelter-pushes-human-history-back-to-65,000-years/8719314#:%7E:text=New%20excavations%20of%20a%20rock,earlier%20than%20archaeologists%20previously%20thought." target="_blank" rel="noopener">dated at 65,000 years</a>.</p> <p>Arnhem Land is an ideal place to explore the effects of different fire regimes because fire is such an essential feature of the natural and cultural environment.</p> <p>Australia’s monsoon tropics are particularly fire prone given the sharply contrasting wet and dry seasons. The wet season sees prolific growth of grasses and other flammable plants, and dry season has reliable hot, dry, windy conditions.</p> <p>Millennia of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-best-fire-management-system-is-in-northern-australia-and-its-led-by-indigenous-land-managers-133071" target="_blank" rel="noopener">skilful fire management</a> by Indigenous people in these landscapes have allowed plants and animals needing infrequently burnt habitat to thrive.</p> <p>This involves shifting “mosaic” burning, where small areas are burned regularly to create a patchwork of habitats with different fire histories. This gives wildlife a diversity of resources and places to shelter in.</p> <p>Conservation biologists suspect that the loss of such patchy fires since colonisation has contributed to the <a href="http://132.248.10.25/therya/index.php/THERYA/article/view/236/html_66" target="_blank" rel="noopener">calamitous demise</a> of wildlife species across northern Australia, such as northern quolls, northern brown bandicoots and grassland melomys.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">"Fire is the way to really look after the land and the people. Since we started here, we've been using fire. And we need to bring it back because it unites the people and the land." Jacob Morris, Gumea-Dharrawal Yuin man. 🎥 Craig Bender &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/VeraHongTweets?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@VeraHongTweets</a> <a href="https://t.co/Afh6iwIrOX">pic.twitter.com/Afh6iwIrOX</a></p> <p>— FiresticksAlliance (@FiresticksA) <a href="https://twitter.com/FiresticksA/status/1436177617049296901?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2021</a></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Collapse of the cypress pine</strong></p> <p>Our study was undertaken over 25 years, and wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support and close involvement of the Traditional Owners over this time.</p> <p>It compared an area under near continuous Indigenous management by the Kune people of Western Arnhem Land with ecologically similar and unoccupied areas within Kakadu National Park.</p> <p>We found populations of the cypress pine (<em>Callitris intratropica</em>) remained healthy under continual Aboriginal fire management. By contrast, cypress pine populations had collapsed in ecologically similar areas in Kakadu due to the loss of Indigenous fire management, as they have across much of northern Australia.</p> <p>The population of dead and living pines is like a barcode that records fire regime change. The species is so long lived that older trees were well established before colonisation.</p> <p>The timber is extremely durable and termite resistant, so a tree killed by fire remains in the landscape for many decades. And mature trees, but not juveniles, can tolerate low intensity fires, but intense fires kill both.</p> <figure class="align-center zoomable"><em><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=800&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=800&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=800&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1005&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1005&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475072/original/file-20220720-22-odbe84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1005&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" alt="" /></a></em><figcaption><em><span class="caption">Cypress pine timber can remain in the landscape decades after the tree died.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Hains/Atlas of Living Australia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></em></figcaption></figure> <p>Since 2007, park rangers have attempted to emulate cultural burning outcomes. They’ve used aircraft to drop incendiaries to create a coarse patchwork of burned and unburned areas to improve biodiversity in the stone country within Kakadu.</p> <p>Unfortunately, our research found Kakadu’s fire management interventions failed to restore landscapes to the healthier ecological condition under traditional Aboriginal fire management.</p> <p>While the Kakadu aerial burning program increased the amount of unburnt vegetation, it didn’t reverse the population collapse of cypress pines. Searches of tens of kilometres failed to find a single seedling in Kakadu, whereas they were common in comparable areas under Aboriginal fire management.</p> <p>Our study highlights that once the ecological benefits of cultural burning are lost, they cannot be simply restored with mainstream fire management approaches.</p> <p>But that’s not to say the ecological impacts from the loss of Aboriginal fire management cannot be reversed. Rather, restoring fire regimes and ecosystem health will be slow, and require special care in where and how fires are set.</p> <p>This requires teams on the ground with deep knowledge of the land, rather than simply spreading aerial incendiaries from helicopters.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">After 60 years of fire exclusion, another magic day restoring fire to Arakwal-Bundjalung-Bumberlin country. <a href="https://t.co/xRRNb4ELdQ">pic.twitter.com/xRRNb4ELdQ</a></p> <p>— Dr. Andy Baker (@FireDiversity) <a href="https://twitter.com/FireDiversity/status/1537768580455931905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 17, 2022</a></p></blockquote> <p><strong>There’s much to learn</strong></p> <p>There remains much for Western science to learn about <a href="https://theconversation.com/fighting-fire-with-fire-botswana-adopts-indigenous-australians-ancient-burning-tradition-135363" target="_blank" rel="noopener">traditional fire management</a>.</p> <p>Large-scale institutional fire management is based on concepts of efficiency and generality. It is controlled by bureaucracies, and achieved using machines and technologies.</p> <p>Such an “industrial” approach cannot replace the placed-based knowledge, including close human relationships with Country, underpinning <a href="https://www.firesticks.org.au/about/cultural-burning/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cultural burning</a>.</p> <p>Cultural burning and institutional fire management could be thought of as the differences between home cooking and fast food. Fast food is quick, cheap and produces the same product regardless of individual needs. Home cooking takes longer to prepare, can cater to individual needs, and can improve wellbeing.</p> <p>But restoring sustainable fire regimes based on the wisdom and practices of Indigenous people cannot be achieved overnight. Reaping the benefits of cultural burning to landscapes where colonialism has disrupted ancient fire traditions take time, effort and resources.</p> <p>It’s urgent remaining traditional fire practitioners are recognised for their invaluable knowledge and materially supported to continue caring for their Country. This includes:</p> <ul> <li>actively supporting Indigenous people to reside on their Country</li> <li>to pay them to undertake natural resource management including cultural burning</li> <li>creating pathways enabling Indigenous people separated from their country by colonialism to re-engage with fire management.</li> </ul> <p>Restoring landscapes with sustainable cultural burning traditions is a long-term project that will involve training and relearning ancient practices. There are extraordinary opportunities for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike to learn how to Care for Country.</p> <hr /> <p><em>The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Victor Steffensen, the Lead Fire Practitioner at the Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation, who reviewed this article.</em><!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184562/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-bowman-4397" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Bowman</a>, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-tasmania-888" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Tasmania</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/christopher-i-roos-1354187" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Christopher I. Roos</a>, Professor, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/southern-methodist-university-1988" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Southern Methodist University</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/fay-johnston-90826" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fay Johnston</a>, Professor, Menzies Institute for Medical Research, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-tasmania-888" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Tasmania</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-in-arnhem-land-reveals-why-institutional-fire-management-is-inferior-to-cultural-burning-184562" target="_blank" rel="noopener">original article</a>.</em></p> <p><em>Image: @FireDiversity (Twitter)</em></p>

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The Queen's staff go on strike: Outraged over "inferior" pension payments

<p>Some of the Queen’s staff have gone on a strike over a pension dispute.</p> <p>Staff who work for Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), a charity managed on behalf of the Queen, gathered to picket outside the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace on Tuesday, in a row over their pensions package.</p> <p>The GMB union’s regional organiser Michael Ainsley said workers are furious after HRP commissioned expensive cakes for a royal campaign while pensions for the staff are getting replaced by an “inferior” model.</p> <p>Discussions between the union and the charity reached a stalemate as the GMB said HRP’s offer for the affected 120 employees was “not good enough”.</p> <p>However, the row continued following HRP’s cake campaign.</p> <p>“Our members’ disappointment turned to fury however when they were made aware that HRP had commissioned several elaborate and very expensive cakes from Choccywoccydoodah, to launch a new campaign,” said Ainsley.</p> <p>“The crass insensitivity shown by HRP in squandering money in this way while telling employees that their pensions are unsustainable is incredible. Perhaps HRP consider it better to ‘let them eat cake’ in their retirement instead of them being able to buy groceries or pay rent and utilities bills.”</p> <p>Staff voted to support strike action, with 91 per cent in favour after a turnout of 88 per cent.</p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 333.49609375px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7823005/gettyimages-1078742616.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/cb5c65712d0a46aca0313ae167d79f05" /></p> <p>HRP’s chief executive John Barnes said the Tuesday strike would not impact the running of the sites.</p> <p>“The strike follows a negotiation with the trade unions in January, where we improved upon our already generous offer to scheme members,” said Barnes.</p> <p>“We have already offered substantial compensation and transition arrangements to the 11 per cent of our staff who are affected.</p> <p>“We believe our last offer to be a generous one, and while we respect the rights of trade union members to take industrial action, we will not be changing our decision to close the Defined Benefit scheme.”</p> <p>The pension scheme, which includes an employer’s contribution of 33 per cent, is set to be closed and replaced by April.</p> <p>“[The scheme] is financially unsustainable, and closing it will enable us to increase employer contributions to pensions for everyone by two per cent – an offer that is fundamentally fairer to our entire workforce,” said Barnes.</p> <p>Three more strike actions have been planned for February 6, 16 and 21. </p> <p>“GMB remains committed to achieving a negotiated settlement but HRP need to get real with what they’re offering our members,” said Ainsley.</p>

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How to handle people who make you feel inferior

<p><em><strong>Susan Krauss Whitbourne is a professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She writes the Fulfilment at Any Age blog for Psychology Today.</strong></em></p> <p>You’ve got a relative who always purports to be the expert on any subject. Although it’s sometimes helpful to get actual advice you can use, the constant drumbeat of supposedly knowledge-based conclusions that comes out of this person’s mouth leaves you feeling that somehow you’re defective. When you think about it, the advice was useful, but it was given in a tone of voice that seems to have been designed to drive the point home that your ideas – and you – completely lack validity.</p> <p>When people go out of their way to make you feel bad about yourself, the question becomes whether it’s you or them. If ordinarily you feel your self-concept is pretty robust, it shouldn’t really be affected by some small event that exposes your inadequacy. In fact, when you think about it, there are plenty of people who make you feel comfortable around them without feeling the least bit weak or defensive. Recent research by Simon Fraser University’s Uthike Girme and colleagues (2017) examined what they call “relationship-specific” attachment insecurity. They proposed that people can be made to feel insecure within a particular relationship, even when on the whole, they’ve got a relatively solid sense of who they are. Although the research focused on attachment security within a romantic relationship, the results can be thought of as generalisable to other close relationships as well.</p> <p>As Girme et al. note, “greater turbulence in the form of more negative emotions and irritations that occur during difficult transition periods escalates doubts and increases feelings of uncertainty about the relationship." In other words, when you’re made to feel insecure in your relationship, you question whether your partner will really be there for you. Translating this to the more general problem of feeling insecure with a non-romantic partner, the experience of being made to feel insecure should also create emotional turbulence. Part of what might influence your sense of insecurity, though, is whether you expect the relationship will endure over time. If you feel you’re going through a rough time that eventually will work itself out, you won’t be as upset if another person is unsupportive temporarily.</p> <p>Attachment security is the basic feeling that your relationship with others is solid and will endure over time. People high in this quality, additionally, have an equally solid sense of self. They don’t worry when someone comes along who challenges this stable base. However, if the Simon Fraser researchers are right, just because you feel secure one day doesn’t mean you’ll feel secure the next if something happens that challenges this foundation of your self-concept. Girme et al. hypothesised first that people high in attachment security expected their relationships to be more stable over time, and indeed this was confirmed. They next examined whether people’s feelings of distress would vary according to fluctuations in attachment security and, on a study of individuals drawn from a community sample, were able to establish this point. Finally, using a sample of couples undergoing the transition to parenthood, a notably stressful time, the Canadian researchers showed that those whose attachment security fluctuated the most throughout this 2-year period of change in their partner's availability were the ones who felt the most emotional distress.</p> <p>In summarising the findings of their three studies, Girme and her collaborators conclude that their work “counterbalance(s) previous research documenting secure individuals’ steadfast resilience when confronted with potentially damaging relationship experiences." In fact, the people who expect the greatest relationship stability are the ones who suffer the most when things go wrong. The flip side of this is that people low in attachment security don’t seem as distressed if their relationship partner becomes unavailable to them. Expecting less, they’re less surprised and disappointed when they get it.  </p> <p>If we extrapolate from the conclusions of the Canadian research team to other, non-romantic relationships, similar principles may apply. In your own circle of friends, relatives, and co-workers, there are some people who reinforce and others who undermine your own security. In these instances, it’s important to ask yourself why these people challenge your basic sense of self. Is it because they are outright critical? Or do they make themselves seem more desirable by being emotionally unavailable? Then ask yourself whether it’s you or them? What causes people to need to make you feel insecure?</p> <p>To answer some of these questions, look outside your own relationship with these insecurity-fostering people. How do they relate to others, and what do others do in their presence? Do you sense that others, too, are made to feel small? Once you realise that is them and not you, this can help you neutralise your interactions with them. Going in ahead of time with them, knowing that you’ll be led down the path of self-doubt and anxiety, will allow you to make more objective appraisals of the situation. Girme et al. noted that people high in attachment security who were made to feel insecure also felt high levels of emotional distress. You can set that distress aside when you understand its source. You can also turn the tables on these findings to examine your own behaviour with others. Are you the one who needs to put people down by showing your superiority? Having a solid sense of self means that you don’t need to inflict this pain on others, because you’re confident in your own self-worth.</p> <p>To sum up, the way you handle people who make you insecure is to turn your attention inward and shore up your own self-esteem. Just because one person leads you to question yourself doesn’t mean that you’re inadequate. There may also be times when you’re particularly vulnerable. Recognise that people’s feelings of security can vary over time, and this will help you reduce the distress that one given individual can cause.</p> <p><em>Written by Susan Krauss Whitbourne. First appeared on <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/" target="_blank">Psychology Today</a></strong></span>.</em></p>

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