The New York Times ‘Reducing Fire, and Cutting Carbon Emissions, the Aboriginal Way’

Thomas Fuller writes in the New York Times on how, as blazes rage in southern Australia, Indigenous fire-prevention techniques that have sharply cut destructive bushfires in the north are drawing new attention. The author speaks with Jeremy Russell-Smith, Andrew Edwards and Dean Yibarbuk of the ISFMI. Read the full article here.

'Over the past decade, fire-prevention programs, mainly on Aboriginal lands in northern Australia, have cut destructive wildfires in half. While the efforts draw on ancient ways, they also have a thoroughly modern benefit: Organizations that practice defensive burning have earned $80 million under the country’s cap-and-trade system as they have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions from wildfires in the north by 40 percent.

These programs, which are generating important scientific data, are being held up as a model that could be adapted to save lives and homes in other regions of Australia, as well as fire-prone parts of the world as different as California and Botswana.'

Photo: reproduced from original article.