Gunaikurnai land care linked to Croajingolong wildfire history in new study
A study of lake sediments in southeastern Australia links the disruption of Indigenous fire practices after colonisation to denser forest and hotter fires.
Gunaikurnai land care is central to a study published on 7 October 2026 that links the disruption of Indigenous fire practices after colonisation to denser forest and hotter fires in Croajingolong National Park, in southeastern Australia. The findings add a long historical record to debates about how the region manages wildfire risk.
University of Melbourne researchers worked with the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation to reconstruct about 1,000 years of vegetation, fire and erosion around Purghagoolah, a lake in East Gippsland. Their findings, published in Nature, concern the history of this landscape and the changes recorded there after British colonisation.
What the Purghagoolah sediments show
According to the Guardian, the team examined pollen and charcoal particles preserved in a sediment core about a metre long. Those deposits helped the researchers trace changes in vegetation alongside fire frequency and intensity. The record gives them a way to compare conditions across centuries, including the period before and after the disruption of Gunaikurnai land care.
The study describes the earlier landscape as stable, open woodland maintained through frequent, fine-grained, low-temperature cultural burning by Gunaikurnai people. After colonisation, the researchers report a sequence of hotter fires, greater eucalypt cover, a shift toward forest and more soil erosion. The University of Melbourne account puts the increase in eucalypt cover at fourfold.
That fourfold figure describes vegetation in the study record. It is not a count of wildfires or a measure of damage. The distinction matters because the researchers are using historical evidence to explain how the landscape changed, while the study does not provide a numerical forecast of fires or losses under any future management approach.
How land-use change figures in the wildfire risk
The researchers argue that the landscape changes began before human-driven climate change. Their account places colonial disruption of Indigenous land care among the causes of present vulnerability in southeastern Australian eucalypt forests. It does not remove climate from the picture: the Nature abstract says more flammable landscapes amplified its influence on wildfire risk.
Lead author Michael-Shawn Fletcher told the Guardian that the removal of Gunaikurnai people from Country was followed by more trees and shrubs. In his account, hotter fires then encouraged eucalypts to grow, adding vegetation that could feed further fires. The researchers describe that reinforcing process as a ‘catastrophic wildfire loop’.
The reconstruction is grounded in one lake and its surrounding forest. It offers evidence about that landscape over a long period, but the published material does not establish that every forest in southeastern Australia changed in the same way. The findings therefore inform a regional discussion without supplying a uniform history for the whole region.
Why researchers are discussing cultural burning
Fletcher says the work supports bringing Indigenous knowledge into contemporary fire management. Cultural burning, as the Guardian explains it, uses low-temperature fire with attention to place and timing. The practice differs from standard government hazard-reduction burns. The study’s historical findings support the researchers’ case for considering it, rather than proving a particular reduction in future wildfire damage.
Gunaikurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett said the research provides scientific support for Gunaikurnai towera land-management initiatives, according to the University of Melbourne account carried by Phys.org. His response places the study alongside work by Traditional Owners to care for Country, the practice whose interruption the researchers identify in the historical record.
David Bowman, a University of Tasmania fire scientist who was not an author, told the Guardian that long-term records help explain earlier fire regimes and their relationship with climate. He said the study could prompt debate about landscape management, while noting that introduced animals and plants also affect ecological processes. His comments point to factors beyond fire practice alone.
The open question for present-day management is how the historical findings translate into action across different landscapes. These sources give no quantified estimate of how much restoring cultural burning would reduce future fire risk. What the study establishes is a sequence of vegetation and fire changes at Purghagoolah, and a case for including Traditional Owners’ knowledge in decisions about fire management.
Sources and context
- Australia’s current wildfire crisis linked to colonial land-use changeNature
- ‘Catastrophic wildfire loop’ created after colonisation left parts of Australia more at risk from bushfires, study findsThe Guardian
- Australia’s wildfire crisis linked to colonial land-use changePhys.org / University of Melbourne
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