January 22, 2020 | The Clarion
Opinion
Page 7
A solution to the
Australian bushfires
What can be done to save the land and wildlife?
By Aia Andonovska
Sports Editor
Australia has been burning for months with the
world watching from afar. Already, 15.6 million
acres of land have been consumed by flames,
leaving people and countless animals homeless
in its wake. These fires aren’t showing any signs
of slowing down anytime soon.
However, there might be a 50,000 year old
solution to this horrible tragedy. This solution
is provided by the Aboriginal people, who have
known Australia’s land longer than anyone
else on the planet. For a very long amount of
time, this indingenous group has practiced fire
prevention. They would set small fires to clear
debris from the land, which in the long run
prevents large scale fires, like the country is
suffering from now.
The solution is clear. Australia needs to
humbly ask for help from the people native to
its land, so they can come together and save the
continent from further destruction. While it may
seem easy, in reality it is not so. Setting these
fires are actually pretty difficult, and require a
lot of skills.
The bushfires in Australia are never going
to fully go away, and they will just continue
to get worse with the onset of climate change
happening all over the world. When the weather
is hotter, it leads to worse droughts, which then
leads to devastating bushfires. When these fires
get as big as they have been, they’re much harder
to put out.
It takes a lot of labor to ignite these small
fires, but Australia may have no choice except
to turn to age-old techniques if the country is to
be saved. This may mean a higher cost too, but
is it really a higher cost if it saves millions of
animals and people moving from their homes?
The Aboriginal way is to care for the land, and
maybe this is something Australians should start
practicing too. It’s time for the world to start
looking towards the future.
4/
This 3-D visualization shows the areas affected by wildfires in Australia. This image, based on NASA’s FIRMS (Satellite data regarding fires), was created by
Anthony Hearsey of Creative Imaging. The image went viral on Reddit and other online sites.