WITH a long, hot and dry summer on the cards for the shire, there’s a new band of residents ready to leap into action if required.
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Members of Leeton’s Aboriginal community have recently completed bushfire training with the aim of increasing participation in rural fire fighting and the development of cultural burning practices as a form of hazard reduction and conservation.
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Cultural burning is an ancient method of mosaic burning of patches of bushland that reduces the fuel load, done as a slow cool burn that allows animals to move out of the way of the fire, and doesn’t harm big trees, but rather helps native grasses and shrubs to regenerate.
Riverina Local Land Services is one of a number of organisations around Australia who have started to use cultural burning on land that has high conservation value.
Greg Packer from Riverina Local Land Services said the training was part of an ongoing program to collaborate with Aboriginal people in cultural burning on selected sites.
“It’ a great way of bringing bushfire fighters, local farmers, Aboriginal Land Council members and staff from Local Land Services together to learn new techniques from each other,” he said.
This training follows on from highly successful cultural burns on some travelling stock reserves undertaken last year.
More cultural burning is planned when conditions are again suitable, so cool mosaic burns are once again possible.
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