How Australia combines modern tech and Indigenous knowledge to fight fire

Australia's approach to combating wildfires, which integrates cutting-edge technology with Indigenous knowledge, offers valuable lessons as Spain declares a national state of emergency due to its own major wildfires. Professor Marta Yebra, a bushfire expert based in Canberra but originally from Spain, finds the European wildfires particularly resonant.

Professor Yebra leads the Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence, established after Australia's devastating 2019-20 Black Summer fires, which consumed an area roughly the size of the UK. Her team investigates how technologies like satellites, drones, and AI can enhance fire detection, complementing the expertise of seasoned firefighters. Crucially, they also incorporate Australia's millennia-old Indigenous knowledge, which has been passed down through generations.

This ancient wisdom, a cornerstone of Indigenous culture long before European settlement in the 18th century, has only recently gained widespread recognition for its value in fire management. Yebra has pioneered a project that merges this traditional knowledge with advanced satellite imagery to pinpoint areas most susceptible to fires.

Satellite data provides "fuel moisture content" information, indicating potential fuel loads like dry leaves, grass, shrubs, and bark. However, this data alone is incomplete. This is where individuals like Adrian Webster, who grew up on the south coast of New South Wales (NSW), contribute. Webster learned to interpret the environment, or "country" – the Indigenous term for ancestral land – from his elders.

Indigenous elders taught Webster to use fire as a land management tool and to maintain a spiritual connection to the land. By applying Indigenous ecological knowledge, such as a plant's color and scent or the shade provided by trees, he can corroborate the satellite data from Yebra's team. Webster explains that while Yebra's data was "amazing," it lacked "translation to what it meant on the ground," rendering it "useless" without an Indigenous perspective. He views it as "a map that could guide you through the country and, if you understood it, take you directly into a place that is ready to burn."

Webster's assessment involves "literally digging and going underground," examining "the subsurface level and then everything from that up beyond the canopy." Yebra noted a "remarkable agreement" between Webster's local knowledge and the satellite data, underscoring the combined power of Indigenous expertise and Western science. Her team is now seeking further funding to collaborate with Indigenous communities in co-designing land protection and fire management strategies. For Webster, this initiative is about "allowing our mother – the planet Earth – a voice again."

The Black Summer fires of 2019-20 represent Australia's most severe fire season on record.

Another instance of ancient wisdom influencing modern fire management is Australia's practice of fighting fire with fire. "Cultural burning" is a long-standing Indigenous Australian practice for environmental management and maintaining a spiritual bond with the land. This includes lighting "cool fires"—small, controlled blazes that create a mosaic landscape, preventing fuel accumulation in any single area.

Yebra highlights the absence of such a "cultural aspect to this kind of landscape planning" in Europe. Wildfire scientists in Spain attribute the current devastating blazes to a massive build-up of fuel. Yebra finds the situation in Spain "difficult to watch, but it is not surprising," especially as "climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme fire weather across southern Europe."

She believes Europe, currently experiencing its worst wildfires in decades, could benefit from Australia's extensive firefighting experience. "We have decades of experience living with large and high-intensity bushfires," she states. "One of the biggest changes we are seeing in bushfire management is a shift from simply reacting to fires towards anticipating risk and acting earlier. The earlier we can identify risk or detect an ignition, the more options firefighters have."

Marta Yebra leads a team dedicated to developing technology for preventing large bushfires.

Webster emphasizes that a crucial lesson for the world from Australia is "don't sit back and wait." He explains, "The longer you leave it, the more fuel there is to burn, so the fire is naturally going to be bigger and harder to extinguish." He adds, "Indigenous people always knew that, so we burnt continuously all the time. That way there was no fuel for big fires."

The practice of lighting cool fires dates back 60,000 years. Webster's role includes assessing an area before a cool fire is lit, looking for natural indicators of oil and water in the landscape to ensure the blaze remains controlled. "All the answers are in the environment," he says. "There's a sweet spot in the middle where there's enough water to slow that fire down but there's enough oil to push that fire on."

A more contemporary tactic widely used in Australia is a prescribed burn, also known as a hazard reduction burn. These carefully planned, often large-scale fires are typically conducted during cooler months and are increasingly being adopted in parts of Europe. Superintendent Andrew Shurety from Fire and Rescue NSW notes that this approach is particularly vital in "urban fringes." As Australia's population grows and suburbs expand, more people are moving closer to bushland, making hazard burns firefighters' "main mitigating factor that we try to do to reduce the risk of bushfires because we know they're going to come." Shurety points out, however, that longer fire seasons and increased rain during cooler months shorten the window for conducting such burns.

Depriving a fire of fuel is also the principle behind "backburning," a widely accepted practice in Australia where a blaze is intentionally ignited ahead of a main fire to remove vegetation and prevent its spread. This approach is also gaining traction internationally, as Queensland firefighter Damian Hatfield discovered.

Queensland firefighter Damian Hatfield was deployed to Canada in 2023.

When Hatfield traveled to Alberta, Canada, with a contingent of Australian firefighters to assist with the country's worst wildfires on record, backburning was not widely employed. A year later, the situation had changed. "Backburning was definitely much more at the forefront when I returned in 2024," he says, noting that Canadian firefighters showed "no hesitation" in incorporating the approach into their operations.

Drones have also revolutionized Australia's bushfire response, particularly in recent years, according to Trent Curtin from the Rural Fire Service in NSW. "The local crews arrive, send a drone up quickly, have a look at where the fire is and how it's progressing, get some intelligence and make decisions before we can even get our large helicopters or other aircraft down," Curtin explains. Drones also transport heavy equipment to ground crews, initiate blazes for backburning operations, and aid in assessing fire damage.

Back at Yebra's center, the team's work is especially pertinent given weather forecasters' prediction of a super El Niño this summer, which could heighten the probability of extreme heat, drought, and bushfires. "Our next fire season is looking like it's going to be a bad one," Yebra warns.

This concern is shared by Jason Heffernan, chief officer of the Country Fire Authority in Victoria, Australia's southeastern state. The memories of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, the country's deadliest on record, remain vivid there. "For this summer coming, we're bracing for what could be something extremely significant," Heffernan states. He also observes that local fire seasons are starting earlier and lasting longer. "Unfortunately for Australia," he adds, "our environment is designed to burn."

However, as the world prepares for more frequent and intense wildfires, Heffernan believes "we must take a global perspective." He emphasizes, "No fire service can do this on their own and the key is to have formal and trusted networks," along with national and international resource-sharing agreements. One challenge for a fire chief, he explains, is knowing when to request assistance—too late, and the benefits are lost; too early, and resources might be wasted.

Such a call was made earlier this week when France issued its first-ever request for help from Australian firefighters. Two dozen crew members and several aircraft will be deployed as France battles record-breaking wildfires amidst a prolonged summer heatwave. Australia regularly dispatches specialist teams to the US and Canada, and vice versa, often for "arduous fire crews" experienced in fighting fires in rugged and remote areas. Heffernan notes that requests from Europe are less frequent but anticipates this may change as "the global fire community is becoming more connected." He points out that while forests and climates vary globally, "we're seeing bushfires occur in parts of the world that never had bushfires before."