Comments on: Aborigines improve biodiversity by starting fires

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:33:55 +0000

Well thank *you* for actually doing the work and giving me something to write about! Seriously, it was a great paper – very dense but nicely written and you know as well as I do that there was loads of great stuff at the end about archaeological implications that I didn’t even get to touch on here.

By: Rebecca Bird

Rebecca Bird — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:49:45 +0000

Excellent job on catching every implication of the research and making it accessible! I was most impressed that you caught the bit about the self-limiting nature of the mosaic–that once established, burning no longer becomes necessary to increase hunting returns, and in fact, Martu who tell stories of the mobile desert days describe how they “never used to burn so much…there was plenty of ground already burned to hunt in”.
Wired.com should have checked with you first…
Thanks on behalf of me and my coauthors.

By: May

May — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:00:02 +0000

I work for an environmental non-profit and one of our affiliates: Kansas City WildLands, uses a “prescribed burn” technique to help the native prairie land they are conserving keep out invasive species as well as providing the necessary eco-system that prairies need. Burning stuff can be so good!

By: Liz Ditz

Liz Ditz — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:02:23 +0000

I believe that various Native American peoples also used fire as a biodiversity management tool. If memory serves me correctly, fire in pre contact Yosemite Valley has been studied.