Blog

Indigenous fire management: Lessons and challenges for constructing new fire management paradigms with an intercultural vision By Kathleen Uyttewaal In October’s edition of the PyroLife Webinars, we were joined by Professor Bibiana Bilbao, from the Environmental Studies Department at Universidad Simón Bolivar, Venezuela. We are privileged in PyroLife to have listened to Indigenous fire management approaches from First Nations and Australian Aboriginal perspectives, and there is an endless diversity of Indigenous knowledges and geographies. Bibiana illustrated a case of Indigenous fire management in South America with Pemón communities in Venezuela, sharing lessons and challenges for constructing a new fire management […]

Fire knows no boundaries. No matter how many fences we lay down, fire will always find its way and gulp everything down. So, what is the solution? A cohesive fire management system, maybe?

By Judith Kirschner A burning issue: Understanding the imprints of humans on the ecology and evolution of coastal heathlands For the May version of the PyroLife ‘Living with Fire’ webinar, Prof. Vigdis Vandvik (University of Bergen) gave a fascinating lecture on the imprints of human land-use on the ecology and evolution of coastal heathlands. Coastal heathlands are barren, inconspicuous landscapes, dominated by dwarf-shrubs such as Calluna vulgaris,  that cover extensive areas along  the European oceanic coasts from the north of Norway to Portugal. Palaeoecological reconstructions indicate that since around 6000 years before present (Prosch-Danielsen and Simonsen 2000; Hjelle et al. […]