It’s wildfire season in the western United States, and as I record this, the sky has a toxic haze from a forest fire burning thousands of miles away. This is one example of how wildfires are having a greater impact on the everyday lives of people. This trend is global, as example in the Australian Outback over 24 million acres burned through the biodiverse-rich landscape, disrupting the lives of millions of people, and claiming nearly 3 billion animal lives during the 2019-2020 Bushfire Season.

In this episode, I have a deep discussion with environmentalist Shane French from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Shane and I look at the parallels between the wildfires in Australia and the United States, we examine how wildfire ecology is changing in the face of climate change, and end with a discussion on whether these ecological conditions are creating an era where fire ecology is the driving force for environmental change or known as the “pyrocene”. 

Please remember to subscribe to the podcast, and follow us on social media to continue the discussion. Now let’s begin the discussion. Shane welcome to the podcast, can you begin by sharing your background as an environmentalist? 

Shane French: So my name is Shane. I study at Monash University, and I also work at the La Trobe University, currently at a wildlife sanctuary. I’ve certainly enjoyed both. The Monash course I’m doing, the Master of Sustainability has been really fantastic. And Dr. Susie Ho is just an inspiration, and all the lecturers and everything. It’s been a really fabulous place. So yeah, thank you, Monash. The social sciences is what I think really to me taking the complex stuff and making it really simple and adaptable to anyone. So a five-year-old can do something to help the world be a better place and a 70-year-old can do something and a 40-year-old and a banker and a hippie and whoever. So yeah, that’s my thing. And I’m currently really getting into urban biodiversity. So connecting people in urban areas to nature and going through the empathy creates awareness and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy really and it creates a want and a desire to protect the natural environment if you can empathize with it and enjoy it. So yeah, yeah I’m trying to take a more sustainable approach for myself and you can’t win every battle and you’ve got to choose the things that you’re really passionate about because people pick up on that passion so that’s kind of how I landed where I am now, I guess. And so that journey is continuing at La Trobe University with my work at the Wildlife Sanctuary. 

CS: Shane, I love the passion you have a passion for teaching everyone about sustainability. I It’s wildfire season here in the US, and recently Australia had major wildfires burning over 24 million acres. As an environmentalist who understands the Australian outback and the destruction these fires have caused, how do you see wildfire’s role in the Australian outback?

SF: Fires have always been a part of Australia’s ecosystem. For tens of thousands of years, the First Nations people used fire for land management and land regeneration. We’re starting to see some of those, they’re often called cultural burns, but those land management practices are starting to come out and local councils are participating with local First Nations groups in bringing back some of these burns, which is great. It’s really great to see. So it’s a really important part of Australia’s regeneration and habitat management and it has been for a really, really long time. What we’re seeing is fire is changing. So the techniques that we use like back burning and things like that to remove understory, excessive understory in high prone areas, fire prone areas, those techniques are having to change. So it’s the land regeneration component is a really important part of fire and the land management component and fire is…you know, integral to our ecosystem. But yeah, the change in fire is something that we’re really having to deal with in Australia now. So the changing conditions, the drying out of the landscapes and just the intensity of fires is really changing the way that we relate to fire. To me, it’s striking how similar this problem is in Australia and the United States. The change, the rapid change in conditions in these ecosystems. Yes, wildfires are…and are prone and natural in these ecosystems, but not to the level that we’re seeing right now.

CS: I want to highlight quickly the point you made about the indigenous people in Australia utilizing fire for thousands of years as a tool in these ecosystems. This is a common thread for how the Native Americans used fire for land management. In ecosystems that evolved with fire, removing it can create a lot of the problems we see in our forest ecosystems. As we continue to talk about the similarities between wildfires in Australia and the United States, Shane, can you describe what the 2019-2020 fire season was like in Australia?

SF: The 2019-2020 fires were horrible. So we’d had some really major fires come through just up from where I live in 2009. I was in India at the time, but it made global headlines and wiped out most of the town, a few towns up from us in the hills of King Lake. They’re still dealing with the trauma of that and people are still rebuilding their homes even 10 years, 12 years later. That fire was unprecedented at the time. So the wind change and the ferocity of the fire was just not something that we were used to or we were expecting. So the fire departments weren’t ready. All of the, I guess, preparations that we were taught for the last 20 or so years for our houses and things had to be rethought because we’d never seen these conditions and this ferocity before and the speed of what the fires moved. People just couldn’t leave. So again, 10 years later in 2019, again massive massive fires burning incredibly hot, traveling at incredible speeds. All you could do is get out of the way and some communities didn’t have a chance to get out of the way. So it was, it may have been the first I think military evacuation of Australia’s own citizens who were stuck down in Gippsland on beaches and the Navy came and took them to safety. We had some friends who go down there every year, go down to that area that was burnt and they take caravans and they stay down for two or three weeks and they go down with friends and it’s an annual event for them. They were caught and they had to make a decision. Basically, rangers came into where they were camping and said, you’ve got 10 or so minutes to leave. The fire’s on the way and…they just had to up and leave. So they took their kids, they packed, you know, a bag of clothes and they left everything and they lost it all. So they lost their caravan, but heaps of people lost their homes and some, unfortunately, you know, lost their lives. Fires have become incredibly unpredictable and it’s getting harder and harder to plan for fires. And the fire seasons are changing as well. So…

Fire seasons are now starting earlier in the year and they tend to be going longer and we have fires burning hotter, which means that the regeneration that the forest gets from the fires in some species of plants, it isn’t happening. The fires are just burning too hot. So it’s actually cooking the seed pods. It’s not cracking them open. It’s not, I guess, activating the seeds. It’s killing them. So there’s a real ecosystem change happening, not just from climate change, from the impacts of fire and of course we’re getting longer and more regular droughts as well which often coincide with large fire events. So I’ve had a really good rainy summer this year, which has been awesome. Things have stayed pretty green and the dams have stayed full and the water catchment. So Melbourne’s water supply has been quite good and quite secure, but it does mean that there will be a lot of extra growth when the next change comes along. And if we see another drought, or we see another really bad fire season. So yeah.

Australia has always been known as the land of extremes and those extremes are getting more extreme. 

CS: Shane, that’s a really good point, and thank you for putting this into context. Unfortunately, with the rise of climate change and humans moving into landscapes accustomed to wildfire, we are seeing year-round fire season with hefty financial, ecological, and overall societal tolls and as the temperature rises this trend will expand. The predicament demands not only immediate attention but also a thorough reevaluation of our approach toward coexistence with wildfire ecology. Some call this the “pyrocene” and personally, living in the wildfire-prone Western United States, it resonates. It’s become a given that every season is wildfire-prone and the majority of the forests and mountains that provide ecosystem services to millions of people, are susceptible to extreme wildfires. 

To me, this underscores the need for climate-resilient policies and community engagement with wildfire ecologists to educate the public on how to live in wildfire-prone environments. I think this would be the first step to mitigate the escalating impact of wildfires that are happening across the globe because understanding wildfire ecology could change a community’s relationship with fire from a destructive force to a tool for creating a sustainable future. 

Shane, we met through the Youth Environmental Alliance in Higher Education, what is your advice to young environmentalists getting into the field? 

SF: Find something that really speaks to you. If you don’t, if you’re trying to do something that you feel like you should be doing as opposed to something that, you know, it’s just like a natural attraction for you to be studying or to be looking at or to being involved in, then yeah, you might not, you might not find the, you know, the strength to go on because it is, it’s a tough battle. And you see, you know, I…You see peaks and troughs, you know, the environment movement had a lot of momentum in the early nineties and there was a lot going on and governments were doing stuff and then it all just disappeared and then in the mid-2000s it all happened again and then it all just disappeared and now it’s all just happening again. So you know there’s been several iterations in my life and I’m only mid-forties of Yay, you know, we’re winning, we’re doing something, we’re getting somewhere. And then two years later you go, what happened to that thing we were doing? I thought we were getting somewhere. So you need resilience. And having those passions and that drive for something you really care about and knowing what you can change and knowing what you want to change. And for some people that might be sitting with the UN for some people who might be sitting in a tree for six months like living with the people who live in trees Like in the Tasmanian old-growth forests, they are They’re heroes. I don’t use that word lightly like they are here. I could not do that. I don’t know how they do that. That is some amazing resolve and they get painted as hippies doing nothing with their lives are actually incredible people. So they should be commended. I couldn’t do it. And I think you need to need to find that. So find that spark in you. Find that thing. And if that is you, if you’re the kind of person that could live in a tree for six months to save that 300-year-old, you know, 2000-year-old tree, then go for it. You know, do it if you can, if you’ve got the means.

But also don’t be too harsh on yourself. There will be barriers and you’ll make mistakes and you will fail. And there’ll be ideas that you just need to let go. You know, I’ve been part of starting environment groups that just fizzled and it was heartbreaking. And it was a lot of work. But it was okay. It was okay to let it go and go, right, well, you’ve got to move on with the next part of whatever that journey takes you. So yeah, I think finding that spark for yourself is a really key thing. And finding your people, that’s another really key thing as well. Find people that will support you and be with you on that journey. Once you find your people, you find your strength. And do…I think do what’s achievable. It’s easy to, sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking really big. And you know, there are a few Greta Thunbergs in the world and there are many other people that aren’t just, who change entire global communities, but changing your community is just as powerful. You don’t need to be that person who is leading the march of 10,000 people. You can be the person in the background. It’s all needed. So yeah, finding your, people and finding your passion and yeah just knowing it’s a journey and it’s an evolution and it’s it doesn’t stop you don’t you don’t necessarily find your spot and just go this is who I am for the next 60 years some people do but that’s awesome. I thought I had, you know, when I was at Ceres, I was there for 20 years and I just, something just sparked in me and I went, I’ve got to move, I’ve got to change, I’ve got to try something different and I’m really glad that I did. So being open to that evolution is, I think for me anyway, was, has been really a key part of my journey. 

CS: Shane, thank you for the wise advice, the great discussion and for being a guest on today’s episode. This has been a livable future podcast, thanks for listening, remember to subscribe and to find us on social media to continue this conversation on wildfire ecology. 

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