Abstract
A large complement of Australia’s biotic web is dependent on a regular regime of burning, much of which is the result of firing by humans. Many researchers have suggested that moderate and repeated burning by Aborigines is a tool designed to enhance hunting efficiency. We present the first test of this with data on contemporary Martu Aboriginal burning and hunting strategies in the arid spinifex savanna of the Western Desert during the cool-dry season (May–August). Our results show a strong positive effect of mosaic burning on the efficiency of hunting burrowed prey (primarily conducted by women), but not larger mobile prey (primarily conducted by men). We suggest that regular anthropogenic disturbance through burning in Australia’s Western Desert may be important for sustaining biodiversity and habitat mosaics, but these effects may be maintained primarily by women’s hunting of burrowed game. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding variability in hunting strategies, issues of conservation, and land management policy for the region.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allan, G. E., and Barker, L. (1990). Uluru National Park: an assessment of a fire management programme. Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia 16: 215–220.
Allan, G. E., and Southgate, R. I. (2002). Fire regimes in the spinifex landscapes of Australia. In Bradstock, R. A., Williams, J. E., and Gill, A. M. (eds.), Flammable Australia: The Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 145–176.
Alvard, M. S. (1994). Conservation by native peoples: Prey choice in a depleted habitat. Human Nature 5: 127–54.
Alvard, M. S. (1998a). Indigenous hunting in the neotropics: Conservation or optimal foraging? In Caro, T. (ed.), Behavioral Ecology and Conservation, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 474–500.
Alvard, M. S. (1998b). Evolutionary ecology and resource conservation. Evolutionary Anthropology 7: 62–74.
Anderson, D. G., and Berglund, E. (eds.) (2002). Ethnographies of Conservation: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege, Berghahn Books, New York.
Bird, D. W., and Bliege Bird, R. (in press). Mardu children’s hunting strategies in the Western Desert, Australia: implications for the evolution of human life histories. In Hewlett, B. and Lamb, M. (eds.), Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods, Aldine de Gruyter, New York.
Bliege Bird, R. (1999). Cooperation and conflict: The behavioral ecology of the sexual division of labor. Evolutionary Anthropology 8: 65–75.
Bliege Bird, R., and Bird, D. W. (2005). Human hunting seasonality. In Brockman, D., and van Shaik, C. (eds.), Seasonality in Primates: Studies of Living and Extinct Human and Non-Human Primates. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 243–266.
Bliege Bird, R., Smith, E. A., and Bird D. W. (2001). The hunting handicap: Costly signaling in male foraging strategies. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 50: 9–19.
Bolton, B. L., and Latz, P. K. (1978). The Western Hare-wallaby, Lagorchestes hirsutus (Gould) (Macropodidae) in the Tanami desert. Australian Wildlife Research 5: 285–293.
Bowman, D. M. J. S. (1993). Evidence for gradual retreat of dry monsoon forests under a regime of Aboriginal burning, Karslake Peninsula, Melville Island, northern Australia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland 102: 25–30.
Bowman, D. M. J. S. (1998). Transley Review No. 101: The impact of Aboriginal landscape burning on the Australian biota. New Phytology 140: 385–410.
Bowman, D. M. J. S., and Latz, P. K. (1993). Ecology of Callitris glaucophylla (Cypressaceae) on the Macdonnell Ranges, central Australia. Australian Journal of Botany 41: 217–225.
Bowman, D. M. J. S., and Panton, W. J. (1995). Munmarlary revisited: response of a north Australian Eucalyptus tetrodonta savanna protected from fire for 20 years. Australian Journal of Ecology 20: 526–531.
Bradley, J. (1994). Fire: emotion and politics: a Yanyuwa case study. In Rose D. B. (ed.), Country in Flames: Proceedings of the 1994 Symposium on Biodiversity and Fire in North Australia, Biodiversity Series, Paper No. 3, Biodiversity Unit, North Australia Research Unit, the Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 25–32.
Bradstock, R. A., Williams, J. E., and Gill, A. M. (eds.) (2002). Flammable Australia: The Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Brand Miller, J., James, K. W., and Maggiore, P. M. A. (1993). Tables of Compostion of Australian Aboriginal Foods. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.
Bright, A. (1994). Burn grass. In Rose D. B. (ed.), Country in Flames, Proceedings of the 1994 Symposium on Biodiversity and Fire in North Australia, Biodiversity Series, Paper No. 3, Biodiversity Unit, North Australia Research Unit, the Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 59–62.
Burbidge, A. A., Johnson, K. A., Fuller, P. J., and Southgate, R. I. (1988). Aboriginal knowledge of the mammals of the Central Deserts of Australia. Australian Wildlife Research 15: 9–39.
Burbidge, A., and McKenzie, N. L. (1989). Patterns in the decline of Western Australian vertebrate fauna: Causes and conservation implications. Biological Conservation 50: 143–198.
Burrows, N. D., and Christensen, P. E. S. (1990). A survey of Aboriginal fire patterns in the Western Desert of Australia. In Nodvin, S. C., and Waldrop, T. A. (eds.), Fire and the Environment: Ecological and Cultural Perspectives, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, General Technical Report SE-69, Southeastern Forest Experimental Station, Asheville, pp. 20–24.
Burrows, N. D., Burbidge, A. A., and Fuller, P. J. (2000). Nyaruninpa: Pintupi burning in the Australian Western Desert, Department of Conservation and Land Management, Western Australia.
Clark, R. L. (1983). Pollen and charcoal evidence for the effects of Aboriginal burning on the vegetation of Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 18: 32–37.
Dayani, N., Ford, L., and Rose, D. B. (2002). Life in Country. Cultural Survival Quarterly 26: 11–13.
Elster, J. (1983). Explaining Technical Change: A Case Study in the Philosophy of Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
FitzGibbon, C. (1998). The management of subsistence harvesting: behavioral ecology of hunters and their mammalian prey. In Caro, T. (ed.), Behavioral Ecology and Conservation, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 449–473.
Flannery, T. F. (1990). Pleistocene faunal loss: Implications of the aftershock for Australia’s past and future. Archaeology in Oceania 25: 25–67.
Flannery, T. F. (1994). The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, Read Books, Sydney.
Gibson, D. F. (1986). The Tanami desert. Research on Aboriginal land. Australian Natural History 21: 544–546.
Gill, A. M., Groves, R. H., and Noble I. R. (eds.) (1981). Fire and the Australian Biota, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra.
Gould, R. A. (1971). Uses and effects of fire among the western desert Aborigines of Australia. Mankind 8: 14–24.
Griffin, G. F. (1992). Will it burn—should it burn? management of the Spinifex grasslands of inland Australia. In Chapman, G. P. (ed.), Desertified Grasslands, Their Biology and Management, Linnean Society Syposium Series No. 13, Academic Press, London, pp. 63–76.
Hardin, R. (1982). Collective Action, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Hawkes, K. (1992). Sharing and collective action. In Smith, E. A., and Winterhalder, B. (eds.), Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior, Aldine de Gruyter, New York, pp. 269–300.
Hawkes, K., and Bliege Bird, R. (2002). Showing off, handicap signaling, and the evolution of men’s work. Evolutionary Anthropology 11: 58–67.
Haydon, D. T., Friar, J. K., and Pianka, E. R. (2000a). Fire-driven dynamic mosaics in the Great Victoria Desert, Australia: I. Fire geometry. Landscape Ecology 15: 373–381.
Haydon, D. T., Friar, J. K., and Pianka, E. R. (2000b). Fire-driven dynamic mosaics in the Great Victoria Desert, Australia: II. A spatial and temporal landscape model. Landscape Ecology 15: 407–423.
Horton, D. R. (1982). The burning question: Aborigines, fire and Australian ecosystems. Mankind 13: 237–251.
Jones, R. (1969). Firestick farming. Australian Natural History 16: 224–231.
Jones, R. (1975). The Neolithic, Palaeolithic and the hunting gardeners: man and land in the Antipodes. In Suggate, R. P., and Creswell, M. M. (eds.), Wuaternary Studies, The Royal Society of New Zealand, Wellington, pp. 21–34.
Jones, R. (1980). Hunters in the Australian coastal savanna. In Harris, D. R. (ed.), Human Ecology in Savanna Environments, Academic Press, London, pp. 107–146.
Kershaw, A. P., Clark, J. S., Gill, A. M., and D’Costa. D. M. (2002). A history of fire in Australia. Fire regimes in the spinifex landscapes of Australia. In Bradstock, R. A., Williams, J. E., and Gill, A. M. (eds.), Flammable Australia: The Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 3–12.
Kimber, R. (1983). Black lightning: Aborigines and fire in Central Australia and the Western Desert. Archaeology in Oceania 18: 38–45.
Laris, P. (2002). Burning the seasonal mosaic: preventative burning strategies in the wooded savanna of southern Mali. Human Ecology 30: 155–186.
Latz, P. (1996). Bushfires and Bushtucker: Aboriginal Plant Use in Central Australia. IAD Press, Alice Springs.
Latz, P., and Griffin G. F. (1978) Changes in Aboriginal land management in relation to fire and to food plants in Central Australia. In Hetzel, B. S., and Firth, H. J. (eds.), The Nutrition of Aborigines in Relation to the Ecosystems of Central Australia, CSIRO, Melbourne, pp. 77–85.
Lewis, H. T. (1982). Fire technology and resource management in Aboriginal north American and Australia. In Williams, N. M., and Hunn, E. S. (eds.), Resource Managers: North America and Australian Hunter-gatherers, AAAS Selected Symposium Series No. 67, Westview Press, Boulder, pp. 45–67.
Low, B. S. (1996). Behavioral ecology of conservation in traditional societies. Human Natute 7: 353–79.
Lundie-Jenkins, G. (1993). Ecology of the rufous hare-wallaby, Largochestes hirsutus Gould (Marsupialia: Macropodidae), in the Tamami Desert, Northern Territory. I. Patterns of habitat use. Wildlife Research 20: 457–476.
Morton, S. R. (1990). The impact of European settlement on the vertebrate animals of arid Australia: A conceptual model. Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia 16: 201–213.
Nicolson, P. H. (1981). Fire and the Australian Aborigine—an enigma. In Gill, A. M., Groves, R. H., and Noble. I. R. (eds.), Fire and the Australian Biota, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra, pp. 61–70.
Nodvin, S. C., and Waldrop, T. A. (eds.) (1990) Fire and the Environment: Ecological and Cultural Perspectives. U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, General Technical Report SE-69, Southeastern Forest Experimental Station, Asheville.
O’Connell, J. F., and Allen, F. J. (1998). When did humans first arrive in Greater Australia, and why is it important to know? Evolutionary Anthropology 6: 132–146.
Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Ostrom, E. (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Press, T. (1994). Fire, people, landscapes and wilderness: Some thought of North Australia. In Rose D. B. (ed.), Country in Flames: Proceedings of the 1994 Symposium on Biodiversity and Fire in North Australia, Biodiversity Series, Paper No. 3, Biodiversity Unit, North Australia Research Unit, the Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 19–24.
Pyne, S. J. (1991). Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia, University of Washington Press, Seattle.
Rose, D. B. (ed.) (1994) Country in Flames, Proceedings of the 1994 Symposium on Biodiversity and Fire in North Australia, Biodiversity Series, Paper No. 3, Biodiversity Unit, North Australia Research Unit, Australian National University, Canberra.
Rose, D. B. (1995). Land Management Issues: Attitudes and Perceptions amongst Aboriginal People of Central Australia. Central Land Council, Alice Springs.
Russell-Smith, J., and Bowman, D. M. J. S. (1992). Conservation of monsoon rainforest isolates in the Northern Territory, Australia. Biological Conservation 59: 51–63.
Russell-Smith, J., Lucas, D., Gapindi, M., Gunbunuka, B., Kapirigi, N., Namingum, G., Lucas, K., Giuliani, P., and Chaloupka, G. (1997a). Aboriginal resource utilization and fire management practice in western Arnhem Land, Australia: Notes for prehistory, lessons for the future. Human Ecology 25: 159–195.
Russell-Smith, J., Ryan, P. G., and Durieu, R. (1997b). A Landsat MSS-derived fire history of Kakadu national Park, monsoonal northern Australia, 1980–94: Seasonal extent, frequency and patchiness. Journal of Applied Ecology 34: 748–766.
Ruttan, L. M. (1998). Closing the commons: cooperation for gain or restraint? Human Ecology 26: 43–66.
Ruttan, L. M., and Borgerhoff Mulder, M. (1999) Are East African pastoralists truly conservationists? Current Anthropology. 40: 621–52.
Saxon, E. C. (1984). Introduction to patch burning. In Saxon, E. C. (ed.), Anticipating the Inevitable: A Patch-Burn Strategy for Fire Management at Uluru Natuional Park, Melbourne, CSIRO, pp. 5–6.
Saxon, E. C., and Dudzinski, M. L. (1984). Biological survey and reserve design by Landsat mapped ecolines: a catastrophe theory approach. Australian Journal of Ecology 9: 117–123.
Short, J., and Turner, B. (1994) A test of the vegetation mosaic hypothesis: a hypothesis to explain the decline and extinction of Australian mammals. Conservation Biology 8: 439–449.
Southgate, R. I., Alan, G. E., Paltridge, R., Maters, P., and Nano, T. (1997). Management and monitoring of bilby populations with the application of landscape, rainfall and fire patterns: Preliminary results. In McKaige, B. J., Williams, R. J., and Waggitt, W. M. (eds.) Bushfire 97: Proceedings of the Australasian Bushfire Conference, CSIRO, Darwin, pp. 140–145.
Smith, E. A. (1991). Inujjuamiut Foraging Strategies: Evolutionary Ecology of an Arctic Hunting Economy. Aldine de Gruyter, New York.
Smith, E. A., Bliege Bird, R., and Bird, D. W. (2003). The benefits of costly signaling: Meriam turtle hunters and spearfishers. Behavioral Ecology 14: 116–126.
Smith, E. A., and Wishnie, M. (2000). Conservation and subsistence in small-scale societies. Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 493–524.
Stearman, A. M. (1994) “Only slaves climb trees.” Revisiting the myth of the ecologically novel savage in Amazonia. Human Nature. 5: 339–357.
Taylor, M. (1987). The Possibility of Cooperation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Tonkinson, R. (1991). The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert. Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, New York.
Tonkinson, R. (1974). The Jigalong Mob: Aboriginal Victors of the Desert Crusade. Cummings, Menlo Park.
Tucker, B. (2005). Agriculture as drunkard’s promise: A future-discounting explanation for the persistence of a mixed foraging/low-investment horticulture strategy among the Mikea of Madagascar. In Kennett, D., and Winterhalder, B. (eds.) Foraging Theory and the Origins of Agriculture, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC.
Veth, P., and Walsh, F. J. (1988). The concept of “staple” plant foods in the Western Desert region of Western Australia. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2: 19–25.
Walsh, F. J. (1990) An ecological study of traditional Aboriginal use of ‘country’: Martu in the Great and Little Sandy deserts, Western Australia. Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia 16: 23–37.
Yibarbuk, D., Whitehead, P. J., Russell-Smith, J., Jackson, D., Godjuwa, C., Fisher, A., Cooke, P., Choquenot, D., and Bowman, D. M. J. S. (2001). Fire ecology and Aboriginal land management in central Arnhem Land, northern Australia: a tradition of ecosystem management. Journal of Biogeography 28: 325–343.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bird, D.W., Bird, R.B. & Parker, C.H. Aboriginal Burning Regimes and Hunting Strategies in Australia’s Western Desert. Hum Ecol 33, 443–464 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-005-5155-0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-005-5155-0