Decolonising Fire Science: a live-streamed talk

Reshaping fire to care for Country

Join ecologist and environmental scientist Dr Philip Zylstra – live streamed from the Royal Society of Victoria – to learn more about the dilemmas he sees as arising from the predominant modern approaches to fire science in relation to Indigenous fire knowledge. Using the Fire Research and Modelling Environment (FRaME), Philip will introduce Ecological Control Theory, showing how forests limited the impacts of fire and maintained thriving populations of fire-sensitive species long before the arrival of humans. Then he will demonstrate how a paradigm of cooperation rather than domination allowed for the long-term coexistence with fire demonstrated by First Peoples, and the ways that we can adjust our current approaches to cooperate with Country.

You can also book to attend the in-person talk at the RSV or book and zoom from home: use this link.

This event at the Hub has been organised by Talking Fire, a Newstead 2021 project.

About Dr Philip Zylstra

Phil is an Adjunct Associate Professor with Curtin University’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences (Perth), and a Research Associate of the University of New South Wales (Sydney).

Dr Philip Zylstra came into bushfire research from a background in fire management and remote area firefighting. Since that time he has developed the first and only peer-reviewed fire behaviour model for most Australian forests, as well as the first model globally to calculate the direct effects of fire on flora, fauna and soils. His work focuses on understanding the ways that our interaction with forests affect fire risk. Using fire history analysis and state-of-the-art modelling, Phil’s work reconciles deep knowledge from First Peoples with forest ecology and a complex understanding of fire behaviour to provide critically-needed guidance in fire management.