ENVIRONMENT
THE FIRE
NEXT TIME
BUSHFIRES ARE A
SCOURGE OF AUSTRALIAN
SUMMERS BUT THEY’VE
ALSO CAUSED THE RISE
OF AN AUSSIE ICON:
THE GUM TREE.
There are fossils of tree kangaroos on the Nullarbor Plain
that are just 700,000 years old – so what, Professor Bob
Hill wonders, happened to the trees?
This is far from a question for antiquarian environmentalists – knowing how the Australian landscape
responded to climate change in the past will make it
easier to understand how it will respond now. And it
will help us to work out what we can do to reduce the
damage we’ve done, even restore the landscape to what
it was before European settlement.
It’s part of a renewed scholarly interest in Australian botany,
paleo and present, which was at risk of sliding into a subset
of zoology. “Over the years the disciplines combined and as
botany was the smaller it went into decline,” Professor Hill
says. “But this is turning around.
“Now there’s a great research interest in Australian
botany, in how our vegetation evolved in response to fire,
in conservation and in how we can learn about climate
change from the fossil records,” Professor Hill says.
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PHOTO
Professor Bob Hill
“Eucalypts are
the ultimate
fire plants – fire
survivors and