A forest can look ancient and untouched while carrying the consequences of relatively recent decisions. In East Gippsland, a new study suggests that the dense eucalypt landscapes now vulnerable to severe bushfires were partly shaped by the disruption of Indigenous land management after British colonisation.
The research, published in Nature on 7 October 2026, reconstructs roughly 1,000 years of vegetation and fire history at Purghagoolah, also known as Lake Elusive, in Croajingolong National Park. It finds that a landscape once maintained as open woodland through Gunaikurnai cultural burning became denser, more dominated by eucalypts and exposed to hotter fires following colonial disruption.
A thousand years of evidence beneath a lake
Researchers from the University of Melbourne worked with the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation to study sediments accumulated at the lake. Pollen preserved in those layers provides clues about past vegetation. Charcoal reveals when fire occurred, while analysis of its chemical properties helps estimate the temperatures at which material burned.
Taken together, those records tell a story that a modern forest survey alone could miss. For much of the pre-colonial period, the surrounding landscape remained comparatively open despite recurring periods of dangerous fire weather. The researchers associate that stability with frequent, carefully placed, relatively cool cultural fires used by Gunaikurnai people.
The study is also a collaboration in which the Gunaikurnai corporation provided cultural authority, knowledge that informed the research and approval of the manuscript. That matters: cultural burning is not a technique newly discovered by scientists, but an established form of caring for Country whose interruption has lasting ecological consequences.
What changed after colonisation?
After the displacement of Gunaikurnai people and disruption of their fire practices, the sediment record changes. The researchers report an increase in high-temperature fires, followed by a marked shift in vegetation. Their reconstruction indicates that eucalypt cover rose approximately fourfold as open woodland gave way to thicker forest. Soil erosion also increased.
The sequence is important. The authors argue that hotter fires encouraged vegetation changes that left more fuel available for subsequent fires. In turn, intense bushfires can favour the regeneration of fire-adapted plants, reinforcing the conditions for another severe event. They describe this as a potential catastrophic wildfire loop.
The findings challenge a familiar assumption that a dense forest is necessarily the original or most natural condition of a landscape. In this part of East Gippsland, the researchers argue, what is often described as wilderness bears the imprint of colonisation and the removal of an active form of land care.
Climate change still matters — but it is not the only driver
The study does not suggest that climate change is unimportant. Rising temperatures and more dangerous fire weather remain major threats. Its contribution is to show that changes to vegetation and fuel conditions began before modern human-driven warming became the dominant climate influence.
That distinction changes how bushfire risk can be understood. Climate influences the weather in which fires spread, while land management influences the vegetation and fuels available to burn. The researchers argue that colonial land-use change made some forests more susceptible to the increasingly severe conditions brought by a warming climate.
This is evidence from a particular landscape, not a measurement of every Australian forest. Fire regimes differ between ecosystems, and the results should not be read as a claim that all dense forests should be opened up or that one burning schedule suits every place.
Returning authority to Traditional Owners
The most immediate implication is about who leads decisions on Country. The Gunaikurnai Cultural Fire Strategy sets out an approach grounded in cultural responsibility and choosing the right fire, place and time. Its purpose extends beyond reducing fuel: cultural fire also supports relationships, ecological health and the transmission of knowledge.
In the University of Melbourne’s account of the research, Gunaikurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett emphasised the dangers of not caring for Country with towera, or fire. His contribution points to something the scientific record alone cannot supply: the authority of the people whose knowledge and responsibilities are tied to that place.
Victoria’s fire agencies have begun supporting more Traditional Owner-led cultural burns. But state reporting makes an important distinction: cultural burns are led for a range of cultural and land-management outcomes, and hazard reduction is not necessarily their primary purpose. Treating them as simply another fuel-reduction tool would miss that point.
What the findings mean for fire resilience
No single practice can eliminate catastrophic bushfires. Decisions about cultural fire need to reflect local ecology, weather, cultural authority, community safety and the resources available to Traditional Owners. The new research nevertheless adds a long historical perspective to an urgent policy discussion: preventing severe fires is not only about responding to hotter summers, but also about restoring healthier relationships between people, vegetation and fire.
For communities preparing for a changing climate, the findings point to two complementary priorities: cutting the greenhouse-gas emissions that intensify dangerous fire weather, and supporting Traditional Owner-led land management that responds to the ecology and cultural responsibilities of each place. Neither response is a substitute for the other.
The lesson from Purghagoolah is not that fire should be used everywhere. It is that excluding the people who cared for a landscape, and then treating the resulting vegetation as untouched nature, can leave a dangerously incomplete understanding of how that landscape works.
Research and further information
Original study: Fletcher and colleagues, Nature (7 October 2026). Reporting and research context: University of Melbourne (8 October 2026). Cultural fire leadership: Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation.
Featured photograph: Brown Mountain old-growth forest, East Gippsland (2008), by Peter Halasz / Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Illustrative image; it does not depict the Purghagoolah research site.
