Over the past three years, Environs Kimberley has been working with three ranger groups on the Dampier Peninsula: Bardi Jawi and Nyul Nuyl Rangers and Yawuru Country Managers, to further our understanding of how fire affects pindan savannah vegetation.
The project was developed with the Dampier Peninsula Fire Working Group (DPFWG), which brings together several stakeholders, including Traditional Owners, ranger groups, The Kimberley Land Council, government agencies, not-for-profit organisations and the pastoral and resources industries, to improve fire management regimes on the Dampier Peninsula.
Holly Timperley and Benny Angus. Photo: Samuel Younis
The working group is all about delivering good or ‘right way’ fire management, which is vital to protect natural resources, ecosystems and biodiversity, including threatened plants and animals such as the Bilby and monsoon vine thickets (MVTs), and supports both cultural and economic livelihoods on the Peninsula.
One of the goals of the working group is to improve the use of science, knowledge and monitoring in fire management on the Peninsula, which is why these vegetation surveys were developed. Our surveys were designed to help us better understand how different fire histories change the structure of pindan savannah, the main vegetation type on the Dampier Peninsula.
The first step was trying to define which of the different fire histories were important to us — and that’s where this story gets complicated. The three main fire scenarios that we were interested in were:
- Time since last fire
- Frequency of past fires
- The season when most of these fires occurred (we use seasons as a proxy for severity, as early-season fires tend to be cooler than those later in the year).
Using these three fire scenarios, we developed six categories of fire histories, which can be seen in the image below. For example, the first category is places that have been burnt fewer than four times in the past 10 years, and mostly in the early season.
We then used geographic information system (GIS) magic to create a map of each of the ranger teams’ Countries which showed the fire histories as our categories. Once these maps were produced we spent several weeks with each ranger group to conduct quite detailed vegetation surveys across the peninsula in each of the categories.
- Sam Younis
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