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manipulating vegetation and/or as an aid for hunting animals, such as kangaroos and lizards
(Bowman 2001, Mooney and Maltby 2006, Bird et al. 2008). Small patches of dry vegetation are
burned, creating new growth for herbivores, and a fine-scale mosaic, which increased hunting
efficiency, as more habitat types can be covered in a shorter distance. The hypothesis remains
controversial and it is not clear how widely it was used and for how long, and how climate
change and fire management interacted.
Later still, different fire regimes were introduced by Europeans, with less frequent, wide-
spread intense fires that disrupted plant and animal communities, as well as the traditional
hunting systems that were adapted to fine-scale mosaics (Petty and Bowman 2007). Disrup-
tion of traditional fire management has led to declines in range and abundance of many spe-
cies, and where traditional management persists, satellite images show a finer-grained
mosaic (Russell-Smith 2001, Yibarbuk et al. 2001, Russell-Smith et al. 2002, Vigilante et al.
2004, Bird et al. 2008). These mosaics have a greater range of successional stages, including
recently burned nitrogen rich grasses, that enhance small-animal productivity and foraging
efficiency, and provide refuges for fire sensitive species like Cyprus pine (Yibarbuk et al. 2001,
Murphy and Bowman 2007).
Loss of heterogeneity associated with declining traditional fire management impacts on
biodiversity, and homogenizes the fuel base, making wildfires more likely. In the Mediterra-
nean region of Europe, rural depopulation and land abandonment (see Chapter 6), as well as
afforestation with flammable species have increased the frequency of wildfires and affected
hydrology, soil properties, and erosion (Shakesby 2011, Pausas and Keeley 2014). Previously,
mosaic landscapes had been maintained by a range of human uses such as cultivation and
grazing, but with land abandonment, the landscape and fuel base has homogenized due to
scrub encroachment, the collapse of terraces, and overgrowth of tracks (see Figure 4.7). Plan-
tations of flammable exotic species like pine and eucalyptus have further exacerbated fire risk
(Shakesby 2011). Fire hazards are predicted to increase as summers become warmer and
drier. Adaptive management through prescribed burning, and revegetation with less flam-
mable species, will help to restore a more natural fire regime (Scholze et al. 2006, Moreira
et al. 2009, 2011).
Attempts to impose stability on inherently dynamic systems are usually futile, and suppress-
ing fire in fire-adapted systems is doomed to failure (Holling and Meffe 1996). For example, in
the fire-adapted forests of North America, the loss of low-intensity, cool burns in fire-adapted
forest ecosystems led to the build-up of unburned biomass, and contributed to the spread of
destructive wildfires with devastating ecological, economic, and social consequences (Fulé
et al. 1997, Fulé 2008, Mori 2011, Pausas and Keeley 2014). In the Kruger National Park, South
Africa, a policy of fire suppression homogenized fuel availability, and subsequently, various
fire management policies, had no effect on the area of savanna burned, which was largely
driven by rainfall (Figure 4.8) (van Wilgen et al. 2004). In contrast, maintenance of patch
mosaic burns over long time periods can help to maintain a heterogeneous fuel base,
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