The Birpai and Bunyah Local Aboriginal Land Councils are working with Forestry Corporation NSW, the body managing more than 2 million hectares of forests on behalf of the state government, to integrate cultural burning into government-controlled bushfire management programmes. It comes as a fire training camp is being held at Guulabaa – the Place of Koala in Cowarra State Forest near Wauchope – as part of Fire, Country and People, a three-year project funded by the Australian Government.
Wood Central understands that fire and incident management specialists Fireground started delivering on-the-ground training to Wauchope and Port Macquarie Aboriginal community members from March 17-19, 2025.
According to Forestry Corporation’s Aboriginal Heritage and Partnerships Manager, John Shipp, the training will provide participants with essential skills and qualifications in firefighting: “This program creates an opportunity for the Birpai and Bunyah communities to work with government agencies to develop a path forward for effective and sustainable bushfire management combining traditional cultural burning and modern firefighting techniques,” Mr Shipp said, adding that the programme will improve the resilience of community ahead of major fires.
“The use of fire in the environment is only one aspect of the community’s land management experience, which has existed for sixty-odd thousand years.”
John Shipp, Forestry Corporation’s Aboriginal Heritage and Partnerships Manager, on the role that cultural burning has played in land management.
The Fire, Country and People project aims to build on the scientific evidence around cultural burning and assess how traditional Aboriginal fire practices affect the intensity and spread of bushfires. And comes after Wood Central reported on key research from the Commonwealth-supported North-East Forestry Hub, arguing that the NSW State Government must change laws to acknowledge the crucial role that Aboriginal peoples play in keeping forests accessible, safe and healthy.
The report, Identifying and Overcoming Legal Barriers to Cultural Burning, was led by Dr Michelle McKemey from Melaleuca Environmental, Dr Phillipa McCormack from the University of Adelaide and Oliver Costello from the Jagun Alliance Aboriginal Corporation, who provides a pathway to remove barriers inhibiting the delivery of Aboriginal burning practices state-wide.
According to the report, “there is widespread recognition that ‘the law’ can be a barrier to cultural burning.” And despite this recognition, “no research to date has sought to specifically and exhaustively identify the barriers that stem from the law; and there is no publicly available, comprehensive analysis of how law hinders cultural fire in NSW.”
