Indigenous burning and the evolution of ecosystem biodiversity

Abstract

When Europeans arrived in southeastern Australia they found people who had inhabited the continent for at least 40 000 years. Early reports describe them as healthy and well fed. Vegetable food occupied about half the diet and fire was the chief management tool used to maintain that resource. Food-providing areas, chiefly grasslands and open woodlands, were subject to selective factors which resulted in the evolution of ecosystems adapted to burning at certain seasons and frequencies. The benchmarks for their biodiversity are not pristine, but a product of Indigenous management.