A cultural burn guided by Indigenous elders will return fire to Hill View Community Bushland as researchers work to better understand how traditional burning practices support biodiversity in urban reserves.

The burn will be led by Whadjuk Noongar Elder and Professor Simon Forrest, with support from Minang Ngadju educator, Mrs Roni Forrest, the Town’s Mindeera Aboriginal Advisory Group, fire authorities, and researchers.

Unlike a standard hazard-reduction burn, the Hill View project is shaped by traditional knowledge and cultural protocols.

“Our culture has evolved with these plants, knowledge of these plants in their landscape,” Professor Forrest says.

For Professor Forrest, fire is not a new land management tool, it is something he grew up observing.

He says his father would stop at grass trees and light small patches of dead growth when the season, soil and weather were right.

“He would burn it around this time of the year,” Professor Forrest says. “When there’s no breeze, when the soil’s cold, damp, and the right type to burn.”

Chair of the Town’s Mindeera Aboriginal Advisory group Roni Forrest says the Hill View burn has taken five years of planning between indigenous leaders, the Town council staff and fire authorities.

“It hasn’t just happened overnight,” she says.

Mrs Forrest says the project is part of making Noongar knowledge central to how the town cares for local bushland.

“It’s just a fabulous way of engaging and putting Aboriginal issues front and centre in the activities of the Town,” she says. “Not just in the arts, but in looking after Country, which is our thing.”

Mayor of Victoria Park Karen Vernon, says these cultural burns are a vital part of the town’s commitment to reconciliation and environmental protection.

“Recognising and supporting Noongar custodianship of Country is central to our Reconciliation Action Plan, and it’s exciting to be able to facilitate events that show the importance of traditional knowledge to the wider community,” she says.

Curtin University PhD candidate Zoe Webber is monitoring how the bushland responds before and after the burn. Ms Webber is based at Curtin’s Centre for Healing Country and researches cultural burning practices in urban areas.

Ms Webber says cultural burning asks Western-based land managers to look beyond fire prevention. She says prescribed burns are usually framed around risk, while cultural burning looks at the health of the whole ecosystem.

“It’s not about managing fire. It’s more about the holistic process that’s going on in the ecosystem,” she says.

Early signs from last year’s burn suggest the approach is already changing the bushland.

“We had a lot of native grasses come back, which was really exciting,” she says.

Ms Webber says Hill View had not been burned for about 70 years before last year’s cultural burn.

“Post colonisation, a lot of those native grasses were wiped out because those traditional burning practices have not been carried out,” she says.

Professor Forrest says the difference can be seen between burned bushland and bushland that has been left unburned. He says thick leaf litter and dense undergrowth can stop animals moving through the bushland and create dangerous fuel loads.

“The birds couldn’t fly in there. There’s no room for them to fly,” he says. “The leaf litter is 40cm thick in the worst part. And that’s terrible for fire.”

Professor Forrest says success will come from doing the burn as a team effort, with cultural leadership supported by scientific monitoring.

“What you may call biodiversity is about the relationships with all living things,” he says.

“We’re not separate from it. We’re part of it.”