'Fire Country' - a book response

This was a book I wanted to read as soon as I knew it was available. I had already heard Victor Steffensen speak at an Indigenous burn at a friends' property in Warwick, Queensland, in April 2018 (see photographs below). I have intentionally called this blog a "response", not a "review" of the book, because I want to come to the book as a student and a respecter of knowledge, not as someone who deems they have either the right or the capacity to critique what has been written here.

When I saw Victor lead an Indigenous burn I watched as he first interpreted the country on which we stood, and then predicted how the fire would behave ... "going fast through the ironbark, slowing in the gum and then petering out after that." He lit one patch with a match sized flame using no accelerants.  The fire burnt out in a circle, a calm, slow, safe burn.  Within five minutes we were standing where the fire had been. The ground was already cool enough to touch. We had seen the animals move away, spiders and grasshoppers. Then, beckoned by the smoke, dozens of black kites came in and worked the fire margin.

Victor inside the fire circle.

Grasshopper returns to black ashes.

Black kites swooping through the smoke. Notice how low the flames are.

I came away from that event wishing I had taken better notes. I wanted this book to be a replacement for the notes I hadn't taken. Some chapters in particular fed my ecologist heart.

Here is an extract from pages 155-156 which could almost be an extract from the talk given before the burn I attended.

… You must apply the fire respectfully and with a proper announcement so everything knows - land, animals, spirit.

Then it is important to light up in one spot and in the right spot so that the fire introduces itself to the land slowly. Allow the first ignition point to burn for fifteen minutes before putting other fire into the country. The fire starts off slowly, letting out the smell of smoke so that everything will know it is coming. Giving all the animals time to respond to the fire and move to safer areas. Because we don't burn all the country at once, the animals do not have far to go to get to safe ground. 

The fire will burn from one spot in the form of a circle, slowly getting bigger as it moves along. The fire burning in a circle gives all the animals a 360-degree escape route outside of the flames. The right conditions of the vegetation curing calms the flame down so that the animals, big and small, can get away. Tiny, little insects of all walks of life would make themselves visible as they crawled out of the grass and up the trees for safety. They know that being in the trees means they are safe, since the right fire will hardly leave a fire scar on the tree trunks. The more insects seen climbing the trees, the more healthy the land. All those insects escaping the fire, thousands of lives saved instantly that are important to the lifecycles and are food sources to larger animals.

But Fire Country is not an ecologist's journey with fire. It is the story of an Indigenous knowledge system that has been asking to be heard, and asking for permission to once again manage and heal country. Victor has been one of the significant voices for that knowledge system.  Fire Country is fundamentally a story about Victor's passion, vision and frustration in having that knowledge system heard.

A digression about disconnection

Given that this is a response and not a review I will digress into some of the thoughts that emerged for me as I read the book. In Chapter 14 Victor speaks of a journey to Finland, where he meets with elders of the Sami people. A discussion emerges about the causes of the mistreatment of country in Finland and the similarities with Australia.  "We soon came to the agreement to call the ones with no respect for culture and Mother Earth the disconnected people," Victor writes.

As I consider the push and pull forces which triggered and sustained the colonisation project in Australia, I am left to consider this label 'the disconnected people'. 

Convicts were certainly disconnected people. Firstly disconnected from their own families by distance and for those from the 'working class', disconnected from the lawmakers in England who exerted power over them through transportation. As a result of the changes brought by the industrial revolution they were disconnected from the agrarian life, and its associated sympathies for nature. Many were denied access to 'common' land during the enclosures or the highland clearances of the 18th Century.

Those who came to either police the convicts, or to attempt free settlement, were disconnected people.  They were were more pushed out of England than pulled toward Australia.  

For those of the aristocracy who made their way to Australia, Australia was a testing ground, a place to prove yourself and thereby gain entry to a particular place in society back in England or Scotland. Many of the significant names in Colonial Australia had short stays in the land. Having done their time in Australia, they would return 'home'. Similarly marines and suchlike did a 'tour of duty' in Australia. You do not listen to land if you do not intend to stay.

Pastoralists and later agriculturists sought to bring England to Australia, modifying landscape in a manner unsympathetic to the way it had functioned for millennia.  This imposition on the landscape was an imposition with disastrous consequences for the health of the land. 

For the pursuit of the riches buried in the land, e.g. during the gold rushes, the concept of respect for Country is just a hindrance (as the recent behaviour of Rio Tinto proves).  Often the goldfields were populated by men, not families, and if they had families they may well be in other parts of the world, like China. Australia was not their home nor did they intend it to become so. This must limit connection with and respect for country. Australia was a land to be mined, not a landscape to be heard and understood.

For this reason Victor's work is even more significant, because we need to hear this other, older narrative in order to live sustainably within Australia.

For me Fire Country sits with two other works I have read in the last decade; Bill Gammage's (2011) The biggest estate on earth: how Aborigines made Australia and Bruce Pascoe's (2014) Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? Both these books have also sought to bring honour to Indigenous knowledge. Both authors, like Steffensen, make the point that if you don't understand how Indigenous knowledge shaped the landscape then you can't understand the landscape.

If you have heard Victor speak, either in person or on TV, this book is a great read to help you understand his passion.  If this book is your introduction to him then I am sure it will have you yearning for an opportunity to be on country and watch a fire being placed in the way he describes.

Some bird pictures in the Illustrated Sydney News of 1869

Many years ago I worked as a research technician studying the mating behaviour of Brush-turkeys, this may go some way to explaining why this post and these images emerge out of my own filter of relevance and onto my blog. I run another blog that deals with history themes, called Under the Lino (https://underthelino.blogspot.com/).  Today's post could happily be published in that blog, but given that this is my Year of the Bird and given the ornithological content I think it more properly belongs here with my science audience. 

I enjoy the illustrations in some nineteenth century newspapers, of which the Illustrated Sydney News is a fine example.  While I don't fully understand the process of producing newspaper images in the mid nineteenth century, I imagine it to be akin to metal plate etching.  I also imagine it to be a process requiring care and craftsmanship.

The following images and texts can be found in the Illustrated Sydney News of Thursday 5 August 1869. The images can be found on page 5 and the accompanying texts on page 9. This is a link to the brush turkey image.  Thus the sightings of a Brush-turkey in the Botanical Gardens, probably refer to the Sydney Botanical Gardens. According to eBird Brush-turkeys are still found in the gardens.

The scientific names have changed, the Australian Bustard is now known as Ardeotis australis, and the Australian Brush-turkey as Alectura lathami.  The distribution of the Brush-turkey is also now known to extend much further north all the way through to Cape York. I leave this data uncorrected in the quoted text.

THE BRUSH TURKEY; OR, WATTLED TALEGALLA.

(Talegaili Lathami.)

This singular bird is peculiar to Australia, and found from Moreton Bay to the Hunter ; it does not inhabit the plains of the interior. It is gregarious in its habits, very shy and difficult to approach. The eggs are deposited under a large heap of decaying vegetable matter and are not incubated by the bird. A very fine example is now living in the Botanic Gardens.

THE AUSTRALIAN BUSTARD.

(Clioriotis Australis.)

THIS noble bird ranks second only to the emeu (sic), and is as widely distributed over the plains of the interior. It stands higher upon its legs than the great bustard of Europe, and is similar in its habits, feeding on seeds, vegetables, grasses, insects, &c. It breeds in September, and the female deposits a single egg only, on the bare ground, surrounded by a circle of dry sticks, grass, &c.

Poisoning the Vultures

One of the issues I became aware of in reading Birdlife’s (2018) report The State of the World's Birds, was the plight of vultures globally.  Here I quote Case Study 12 (pp 22-23)

Many vultures face imminent extinction across Africa, Asia and parts of Europe, where vulture populations are in freefall. The IUCN Red List charts a relentless decline over recent years. In 1994, 75% of the world’s 16 Old World vulture species were classified as Least Concern, meaning that they were not considered at risk of extinction. Only one species—Cape Vulture Gyps coprotheres—was thought to be globally threatened and was classified as Vulnerable. Today, just two species remain Least Concern. Of the rest, eight, half of all species, are classified as Critically Endangered and are at risk of imminent extinction; three are almost as imperilled and are classified as Endangered; and three are Near Threatened.
Populations in South Asia were the first to collapse, with declines of around 95% between 1993 and 2000. These were principally the result of acute poisoning linked to livestock carcases contaminated with the veterinary drug diclofenac. Worryingly, vultures are also disappearing across vast swathes of Africa. Over a period of just 30 years, populations of seven African vulture species have fallen by 80-97%. Here, the threats are more varied. They include deliberate persecution, such as by elephant poachers who kill vultures so that they do not draw attention to their illegal activities. Vultures are also killed for their body parts, which are traded for their supposed mystical properties. Other threats include habitat loss and degradation, decreasing food availability, fragmentation of remaining populations, human disturbance, collisions with wind turbines and powerlines, and electrocution on electricity infrastructure.

These disturbing statistics provide a place from which to discuss the complexities of wildlife conservation and convergent evolution.

The vultures are divided into two broad groups; the Old World (Europe, Asia, Africa) and the New World (American) Vultures. Even though they have a number of similar adaptations (see list below) they belong to different families of birds.  Old World Vultures belong to to Accipitridae (the raptors) and New World Vultures belong to the Cathartidae.  The similarity in morphology is an example of convergent evolution rather than descent.

Common adaptations in Old and New World Vultures (from Wink, 1995, Ogada etal, 2011)

• bare heads and necks avoid pollution of feathers when feeding inside a carcass
• strong hooked beaks with cutting edges to tear skin apart
• long intestine and a stomach with strong acid are suitable for the digestion of rotten meat and bones and furthermore the latter kills microorganisms present in the putrified carrion 
• the broad wings enable them to ride rising air currents with little energy expenditure while scanning large areas for carcasses
• aerial searching also gives vultures a considerable advantage over terrestrial scavengers because the latter have limited feeding ranges, higher energy expenditures to locate carcasses, and comparatively poor visibility from the ground
• the feet of vultures are more appropriate for movement on the ground than to catch prey (as in other raptors)
• excellent eyesight which enables them to detect carcasses from great heights. (New World vultures also have a well developed sense of smell that is used for locating food in forested areas.)

Vultures play an important ecological role by consuming carcasses.  Outside of the oceans, vultures are the only known obligate scavengers (Ogada etal, 2011).Their strong stomach acid kills microorganisms in carcasses that may kill other scavengers or turn them into vectors for diseases such as anthrax, botulinum toxins, rabies, and hog cholera (World Atlas). Removal of vultures from an ecosystem increases the disease risk posed by these microorganisms.

Poisoning Grys vultures in Asia.

Following the cessation of its patent in the early 1990s, the NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) diclofenac became widely available in India, including for veterinary use.  It is also used in humans for treatment of arthritis, although it is perhaps better known as Voltarin. The drug causes kidney failure in vultures of the Grys genus, (specifically severe, acute, renal tubular necrosis and resultant uric acid crystal deposition in the kidneys and other tissues.) In laboratory studies death occurs in less than sixty hours. What functions as medicine (albeit with complications) in mammals functions as a poison for the Grys genus vultures; a poison that resulted in a 95% reduction in the population of three species of Indian vulture in less than a decade.

White-backed and long-billed vultures were once regarded as probably the most common large raptors in the world but, in about a decade, and with a total loss estimated at tens of millions of individuals, these birds were listed as critically endangered. (Oaks, 2012)

Wikipedia has a page entitled the Indian Vulture Crisis which is worth a read. I have attempted to diagram the flow on effects of this species decline below. The emergent cost on human populations is enormous.

Poisoning African Vultures

Many species use vultures as a carcass detection services, e.g. hyenas and other vultures.  But for Africa’s big game poachers this environmental service also functions as a poacher detection service, therefore some poachers have been deliberately poisoning carcasses to prevent the vultures giving away their location.  A widely reported incident in 2019 resulted in the death of over 500 vultures from the poisoning of just three elephant carcasses in Botswana.

The 'Point of Wonder' for me in this is that it requires so few links to go from providing an anti-inflammatory drug to cows to leopard predation of humans, or from the same starting point to significant interruption of a religion. The intermediary step in this chain is a particular group of birds, the vultures.

Year of Birds ... #YOB2020

Detail of Satin Bowerbird from "After the Rain" by Susie Hamlet.

For a number of years now I have been running ‘themed years’, eg.  'Year of the Boat' (2013), 'Year of Geology'(2016).  Themed years started as an activity with my young son, who now thinks he has out-grown such things. So this year I am running with a theme of my own, “Year of Birds”.  Like the years with my son the years have challenges based on my age,

• 53 bird sightings per week
• collect 53 coins with birds on them
• collect bird postage stamps from 53 nations
• read a number of books about birds (53 seemed too ambitious). The first on that list is Tim Low’s (2014) Where Song Began.
• write some bird poems

I am now in the second month of #YOB2020. I have managed the 53 bird sightings per week - with a little bit of organisation and discipline. I am using eBird to catalogue my sightings and really enjoying the experience (there is a blogpost coming about some insights from eBird). As I neared the end of the month I realised I had nearly observed 100 species in the month … an intentional drive south clicked me over the century mark. Ticking the species box is like finding a hidden treasure in an RPG (role playing game)... and I am observing a decline in my interest in online games :-). I will probably aim to have 100 species every month from now on.

I notice that birds are bringing me much joy. Stand out moments from this month have included leaning on the water tank while a grey butcherbird spent several minutes experimenting with a new tune; a morning walk when a male superb fairy wren scattered dew from the green grass it was pouncing on; and watching a group of seven little black cormorants working the edge of a pond like synchronised swimmers.

Last July, we camped near a billabong in the middle of the Dubbo Western Plains Zoo.  Among all the other waterbirds there was a black swan cygnet with its two adults.  Watching it interact with its parents, or pivot on its chest to stick its bum in the air was entrancing...  like falling in love. Here I was in a park filled with magnificent African animals - cheetah, rhino, hippos - yet I became charmed by a common, fluffy grey bird.  But that is the joy of birds, many of them are so accessible with a look out of the kitchen window, a wander in the local park. They have infiltrated our zeitgeist so much so that it would be hard to go to an art gallery and not find some bird reference.

For me at least there is a correlation between watching birds and good mental health practices. The scanning back and forth for the feathered treasures is like ‘forest bathing’. The use of multiple senses, where sight is often directed by hearing, and things in the periphery get brought into the centre, how a shadow can cue you look in a different place and find the shadow maker … these skills feel very similar to mindfulness exercises I sometimes use in the classroom. As my practice becomes more regular there is a satisfaction in linking sound to sight, and gaining the ability to see just a glimpse of a species in flight and identify it from the way it holds its wings, or the scoop and flap pattern of its flight. I think the phrase in mental health speak is ‘islands of competency’.

I am also finding islands of incompetency, a sound I do not recognise, a fleeting glimpse that does not trigger recognition, and I am treasuring the frustration … using it inspires me to dig a bit deeper. I am also using it to remind me of my students who are learning to count forwards and backwards, add simple numbers together, identify their letters and the sounds that go with them.  They too will transform their frustration into islands of competency.

Having a year creates community. Already a month in, people have shared postage stamps, sent photos or links to articles, lent me books to read. My wife is even enjoying a renaissance in her painting and bird themes are emerging there too.

So the ‘Point of Wonder’ is the birds themselves, but also the therapy and community that observing them has created.

Spider diets

I recently visited the Queensland Museum's travelling exhibition, Spiders, which will be open until 4 May 2020.  I enjoyed seeing the spiders, but I also enjoyed seeing how science is communicated.  This dinner plate in particular I thought was fascinating.

The plate is divided into thirds, each third representing the diet of a spider with a different hunting strategy.

Top: Funnel Web Spider, Hadronyche sp., catches prey that lands on the ground.

Bottom Left: Huntsman Spider, Isopeda sp., catches prey that lands on or climbs up tree trunks, rock and walls.

Bottom Right: Golden Orb-weaving Spider, Nephila plumipes, catches flying prey.

As I thought about teaching food webs I thought that a simple graphic organiser like this could allow students to fine tune their understanding of a spider's place in the food web, with very clear linkage of diet to behaviour and micro-habitat. I like the exhibits method of using specimens, but this could be equally well achieved as a drawing or collage exercise.