Integrated Cultural Fire Management on Bribie Island
Developing fire management guidelines to protect cultural heritage values on Bribie Island.
Integrating cultural heritage considerations and fire management on Bribie Island in consultation with local Traditional Owner groups.Healthy Land & Water’s Integrated Fire Management project is designed to integrate cultural heritage considerations and fire management on Bribie Island in consultation with local Traditional Owner groups.
Activities will protect and conserve cultural heritage values and provide an improved understanding of the role of fire in the landscape.
The project focuses on:
- Working with Traditional Owners to map cultural heritage values on Bribie Island.
- Flora surveys to understand the relationship between significant native species and cultural heritage sites.
- Working with project partners to design and implement fire management practices to protect cultural landscapes.
- Integration of fire management practices into protected area planning and management documents.
What we did
Developing fire management guidelines to protect cultural heritage values on Bribie Island.
This fire project was part of a broader set of projects under funding from the Australian Government's National Landcare Program to reduce threats to and preserve Moreton Bay Ramsar. The activities for Bribie's project involved:
- Developing mechanisms for collectively managing fire across terrestrial components of the Moreton Bay Ramsar Wetland (especially Bribie Island).
- Understanding the historical cultural landscape by mapping ancestral campsites, middens, bora rings, remnant old-growth trees, and other features of landscape significance.
- Developing fire management case studies that examine how fire can be applied to sustain and protect cultural landscapes on Bribie Island.
Measuring success
As a result, to date, this Project has delivered:
- 18 engagements,
- 20 flora surveys,
- midden mapping across 33% of Bribie Island,
- 4 case studies, and
- 1 draft plan for the protection of a culturally significant site near Whitepatch.
Why this project is important
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Effective fire management is crucial to the preservation of cultural heritage values on Bribie Island. The retention of large remnant Bloodwoods, Blue Gums, Brush Box, Swamp Box, Swamp Mahogany, and Cypress pine in eucalypt woodland is extremely important to Traditional Owners. Their existence in this landscape is evidence of many centuries of cultural management. This project represents an opportunity for the Joondoobara and Kabi Kabi First Nations People to re-establish their custodianship of a living cultural landscape that was created and managed by their ancestors for millennia. Managing fire for cultural heritage outcomes is also beneficial for conserving biodiversity. Intense wildfires produce “whipstick regeneration” with a profusion of thin straggly stems, only a few species present, and virtually no understorey. Cooler burns not only allow the big trees to survive, but enable a rich understorey of grasses, herbs, forbs, and orchids to return. |
Project snapshot
| Project name: | Integrated Fire Management on Bribie Island |
| Project manager: | Gabriela Shuster, Healthy Land & Water |
| Catchment: | Bribie Island |
| Timing: | 2018 - 2023 |
| Budget: | |
| Partnerships: |
This project is supported by Healthy Land & Water, through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program and delivered in collaboration with Kabi Kabi and Joondoburri First Nation Traditional Owners, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Vegetation Management Services, and Turnstone Archaeology. |
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What's next
Healthy Land & Water will continue to work with Traditional Owners on Bribie Island to map new midden sites, protect one of the last remaining Ancestral Campsites in South East Queensland and build the capacity of Indigenous Groups to manage protected areas as they edge closer to Native Title.
Project collaborators
This project is supported by Healthy Land & Water, through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program and delivered in collaboration with Kabi Kabi and Joondoburri First Nation Traditional Owners, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, Vegetation Management Services, and Turnstone Archaeology.
