{
  "id": 12687617,
  "title": "Colonisation, not climate change, first primed these forests to burn",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/07/colonisation-not-climate-change-first-primed-these-forests-to-burn",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-07T18:27:43.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Conversation AU",
    "slug": "the-conversation-au",
    "url": "https://theconversation.com/colonisation-not-climate-change-first-primed-these-forests-to-burn-292997"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Bushfire season has arrived, with the Bureau of Meteorology anticipating a strong to very strong El Niño. Southeastern Australia anticipates a prolonged period of hazardous fire conditions. Weather is merely one element of a catastrophic fire. The other factor is fuel – flammable vegetation. A recent study, published today, indicates that the current fuel load in certain Australian forests is not \"natural.\" Instead, it is a result of colonization, which loaded Australian landscapes with fuel a century before human-induced climate change began.\n\nCroajingolong National Park, located in Victoria’s far east, serves as an example. This park, which has the highest level of protection possible – national park, designated wilderness area, and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve – is one of the most frequently burned forests in Australia. The 2019-20 Black Summer fires alone consumed 90% of the park. The intervals between bushfires have shortened, from roughly 40 years in the late 1800s to approximately five years in the most recent decade.\n\nResearchers, in collaboration with the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, examined the issue by studying Purghagoolah, a deep lake inside Croajingolong National Park, which is named after the Krauatungalung people of the GunaiKurnai. The researchers retrieved sediment core samples from the lake's depths to retrieve evidence of a 1,000-year history. The sediment's pollen, charcoal, and infrared spectra reveal the history of these frequently burned forests, allowing them to separate low-intensity fires used strategically by Aboriginal people from high-intensity wildfires. By examining the magnetic minerals and using radiocarbon and lead dating, the researchers were able to anchor this history in time.\n\nBefore European colonization, GunaiKurnai people practiced regular, low-intensity cultural burning, which maintained the land as stable, open woodland. However, during colonization, frontier violence and massacres between the 1830s and 1860s removed the GunaiKurnai people from the land, disrupting a millennium-long relationship of care. After colonization, the sediment core shows a shift towards hot fires, thicker shrubs, increased eucalypt cover, and the transformation of open woodland into today's flammable forest. All of this occurred before human-driven climate change properly began, echoing findings from a 2022 study that showed a region-wide increase in shrubs following the British invasion.",
  "summary": "For more than 800 years, frequent cultural burning kept this land as stable, open woodland.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}