A 2026 study of a single forest landscape in southeastern Australia links colonial disruption of cultural burning with hotter fires, a fourfold increase in eucalypt cover, a shift from open woodland toward forest, and increased soil erosion. Its finding adds a historical land-use dimension to explanations of wildfire risk: it does not replace climate change as a factor, or establish that the same sequence explains fires across Australia.
What the 2026 study found
The study, led by University of Melbourne professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher, reconstructs 1,000 years of vegetation, fire and erosion at Purghagoolah, also known as Lake Elusive, in Croajingolong National Park. The site is on Gunaikurnai Country in East Gippsland, within southeastern Australia’s temperate eucalypt forest.
The authors describe a landscape in which frequent, fine-grained, relatively low-temperature cultural burning helped maintain open woodland before British invasion. After colonial disruption of that practice, the record shows hotter fires, a fourfold increase in eucalypt cover at this site, a shift toward forest, and more erosion. These are findings about the studied landscape, not measurements for Australia as a whole.
Fletcher’s interpretation, as reported by the University of Melbourne, is that colonial-era land-use change helped make the landscape more flammable and amplified climate change’s influence on wildfire risk. Put simply, the study argues that today’s fire danger can reflect both the conditions that make fire weather more severe and the longer history of how vegetation and fuels came to be arranged.
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How land use and climate can interact
Wildfire risk is not controlled by a single variable. Australia’s State of the Environment 2021 assessment describes fire danger as arising from the combination of suitable fuel, an ignition source and conducive weather. The East Gippsland study focuses on a long-term change in vegetation and fire patterns; it does not show that weather or climate can be set aside.
The national assessment reports that aggregated seasonal fire-weather indicators have trended significantly upward since the 1950s over most of Australia, alongside a longer fire season and increases in extreme and catastrophic fire days. It also reports that many seasonal fire-weather indicators were at record highs during the 2019–20 Black Summer fires. These national observations and the millennial reconstruction answer different questions: one tracks broad fire-weather conditions, while the other examines landscape change at one site.
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For scale, the State of the Environment 2021 report, citing Boer and colleagues (2020), says 21% of New South Wales and Victorian temperate broadleaf and mixed forests burned during the 2019–20 fires. That figure describes those forests and that fire season; it is not a result from the Lake Elusive reconstruction.
What the finding does—and does not—say about Australia
| Question | East Gippsland study | National context |
|---|---|---|
| Scale and period | A 1,000-year reconstruction at Purghagoolah (Lake Elusive), published in 2026. | Australia-wide fire-weather indicators assessed over a period beginning in the 1950s; Black Summer statistics concern the 2019–20 season. |
| Main focus | Changes in local vegetation, fire temperature and erosion, interpreted in relation to colonial disruption of cultural burning. | Fire danger from fuel, ignition and weather, including national trends in seasonal fire-weather indicators. |
| Geography | A temperate eucalypt forest on Gunaikurnai Country in southeastern Australia. | Most of Australia for the reported weather trend; different regions and biomes have different fire regimes. |
| What can be inferred | Historical land-use change can help explain how this particular landscape became more flammable and how climate influence may be amplified. | Fire-weather conditions have become more conducive to dangerous fire across much of the country; this does not establish the same vegetation history everywhere. |
The study therefore does not show that colonial land-use change alone caused Australia’s wildfire crisis, nor that climate change is irrelevant. It supplies evidence for a local historical pathway that can interact with contemporary climate pressures. Northern savannas and other Australian landscapes have distinct ecologies and fire regimes; the East Gippsland sequence and its fourfold vegetation finding should not be generalized to them.
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Why cultural fire management cannot be reduced to fuel clearing
Australia’s State of the Environment 2021 report describes European colonisation as disrupting Indigenous caring for Country and fire practices, while also recognizing that Traditional Custodians have sustained or revived cultural fire practices. It presents these practices as having ecological, cultural and community purposes, not simply as a method for reducing fuel.
Appropriate cultural authority matters: the people with knowledge and authority for a particular Country should guide whether, where, when and how cultural burning takes place. Practices and ecological effects vary by place. The sources do not establish one fire-treatment method as best for all of Australia—or prescribe a universal regime for the Lake Elusive landscape.
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That distinction matters when translating the study into policy. A finding that colonial disruption changed a landscape is not a license to treat cultural burning as a generic technical intervention detached from Country, authority and purpose.
Quick Recap
What readers should take from the study
- The 2026 Nature study adds a 1,000-year local history to the discussion of wildfire risk in southeastern Australian temperate forest.
- At its study site, the authors report hotter fires, fourfold greater eucalypt cover, a move from open woodland toward forest, and more erosion following colonial disruption of cultural burning.
- The researchers’ central interpretation is interaction: historical land-use change helped shape flammability, while climate change can intensify fire risk.
- National fire-weather trends provide important context, but they do not turn a single-site reconstruction into a universal account of Australian fires.
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