Aboriginal Communities are continuing to revitalise Aboriginal Burning to reinstate it in the broader landscape. While Aboriginal Burning Practices and the theoretical frameworks have the potential to assist in the management of bushfire and biodiversity threats, Western Scientists continue to misconstrue these Aboriginal practices and theory.

Using a Theory of Wiradjuri Knowledge (or Aboriginal Science) I apply it to an understanding of how Knowledge is emerged to ngadhuringa ‘Caring for’ the Land through Reciprocal Obligations. Through critically reviewing the concept of Cultural Loss I show how the concept of Cultural Change fits the evidence better. With the general preconception of what is termed ‘Traditional Knowledge’ which does not truly represent what is happening, Aboriginal Mob struggle to present our understandings of Cultural Burning in a way that meets the general template of this ‘traditional Knowledge’ and so is undervalued by land managers and related Scientists.

The three practical and theoretical problems this thesis addresses are: Western Science destabilises Aboriginal knowledge; how Aboriginal Mobs’ Land and Sea Management is impacted by past cultural change; and how cultural ways are required to intellectualise Aboriginal burning practices. In this way our Ancestors, particularly Brush Turkey guides our understandings. I have developed a research approach for creating change within Western models of Aboriginal Burning as an insurgent act of challenging existing paradigms.

From this way of understanding the Cultural Practice of Aboriginal Cultural Burning, I created a model of Aboriginal Cultural burning to inform the debate and inform the practice of Cultural Burning. The model is based on the nature of Aboriginal concepts of the cosmos and how the contributions of the Ancestors, including Brush Turkey, emerged from the landscape, Dhuruwirra.

By reenvisaging Aboriginal Cultural Practice as Aboriginal Science we can empower this Aboriginal Cultural Practice as an Alternative Knowledge Source for management of Country. My approach is that emergent methodologies provide a space for developing these ideas. In Aboriginal Societies, knowledge is emerged out of Country through sharing relationships with Human and NonHuman things.

This paper presents a two-stage optimization approach that involves linear integer programming models in each stage for determining optimal expansion alternatives for the Cape Floristic Region conservation areas in South Africa, with an emphasis on the protection of mammal species. While determining the optimal expansion areas, the following spatial and ecological criteria are taken into account: (i) a spatial connectivity of individual reserves, (ii) a minimum population of each species in each designated reserve, and (iii) an overall minimum population target for each species. We also aim for optimum economic efficiency by minimizing the total expansion area. The data set includes about 4000 candidate reserve sites and 38 species of large and medium-sized mammals. Empirical results indicate that the integer programming models can be solved without serious computational difficulty and the optimal reserve design provides substantial savings in financial resources.

A challenge for all universities in Australia is how to engage, and importantly, retain Aboriginal students. It can be tempting to think that addressing that challenge primarily concerns services, support and content. However, that response views the point of adaptation in the student. Academics also need to adapt and evolve if their relationship with Aboriginal students is to be improved and be embracing of how an alternative world view may enhance their own and hence their teaching. Much has been written on what constitutes decolonisation in education and how to achieve it, often involving an Indigenous voice. Less has been written on the personal transition required to realise decolonised practice so that what is experienced by all is inclusive and meaningful. This concerns what the colonisers need to do to bring about change in themselves. To explore this issue, a shared self-reflective dialogue is presented between an academic and a government scientist who have each been transformed by their experience of working with Aboriginal people. Over the structured discussion, a number of threshold concepts come to light that need to be embraced as fundamental elements on the journey to decolonisation. The work is purposefully self-reflective so that others can share the direct feedback we have had from working closely with Aboriginal people in Australia.

Australia's rangeland communities, industries, and environment are under increasing pressures from anthropogenic activities and global changes more broadly. We conducted a horizon scan to identify and prioritise key challenges facing Australian rangelands and their communities, and outline possible avenues to address these challenges, with a particular focus on research priorities. We surveyed participants of the Australian Rangeland Society 20th Biennial Conference, held in Canberra in September 2019, before the conference and in interactive workshops during the conference, in order to identify key challenges, potential solutions, and research priorities. The feedback was broadly grouped into six themes associated with supporting local communities, managing natural capital, climate variability and change, traditional knowledge, governance, and research and development. Each theme had several sub-themes and potential solutions to ensure positive, long-term outcomes for the rangelands. The survey responses made it clear that supporting 'resilient and sustainable rangelands that provide cultural, societal, environmental and economic outcomes simultaneously' is of great value to stakeholders. The synthesis of survey responses combined with expert knowledge highlighted that sustaining local communities in the long term will require that the inherent social, cultural and natural capital of rangelands are managed sustainably, particularly in light of current and projected variability in climate. Establishment of guidelines and approaches to address these challenges will benefit from: (i) an increased recognition of the value and contributions of traditional knowledge and practices; (ii) development of better governance that is guided by and benefits local stakeholders; and (iii) more funding to conduct and implement strong research and development activities, with research focused on addressing critical knowledge gaps as identified by the local stakeholders. This requires strong governance with legislation and policies that work for the rangelands. We provide a framework that indicates the key knowledge gaps and how innovations may be implemented and scaled out, up and deep to achieve the resilience of Australia's rangelands. The same principles could be adapted to address challenges in rangelands on other continents, with similar beneficial outcomes.

For millennia, Indigenous peoples have maintained relationships with their environments and managed resources through complex cultural systems. Over the last few centuries, in settler colonial nations, this connection has been and continues to be disrupted. In some areas, Indigenous cultural fire management was prevented and replaced with Western fire strategies such as fire suppression, exclusion and hazard reduction. Despite this, a global movement has begun to restore and renew Indigenous cultural fire management. This thesis investigates ways in which Indigenous rangers and Western scientists can work together to co-produce cross-cultural knowledge ('right way' science) to support and provide documented evidence for the benefits and challenges of Indigenous cultural fire management.

Indigenous cultural fire management has been re-established at the landscape scale across large areas of northern and central Australia. In southeast Australia, a renewal of Indigenous cultural fire management is underway. In Chapter 2, a systematic review of the academic and grey literature aimed to describe the current status of contemporary Indigenous cultural fire management in southeast Australia. Seventy documented cultural fire management projects were found with the potential for significant upscaling. Over the last decade, eight policies related to Indigenous fire management have been developed by state and territory governments in southeast Australia, with varying levels of implementation. Seventy-eight benefits and 22 barriers were identified in relation to cultural fire management. In the cases where cultural fire management has been successfully reinstated as an ongoing practice, Indigenous leadership, extraordinary relationships, strong agreements and transformational change were identified as drivers of success. For cultural fire management to grow, more funding, policy implementation, long-term commitment, Indigenous control and decision making, mentoring, training and research are required.

While recognition of Indigenous biocultural knowledge is increasing globally, processes for sharing and understanding Indigenous knowledge are limited, and could contribute to improved management of social–ecological systems. In Chapter 3, a case study was presented of the Yugul Mangi rangers of the South East Arnhem Land Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), Northern Territory. The aim of the study was to share Indigenous knowledge of fire, and develop a fire and seasons calendar to improve adaptive fire management and communication. We undertook participatory action research and semi-structured interviews with rangers and Elders during 2016 and 2019. Results indicated that Indigenous rangers effectively used cross-cultural science (including local and Traditional Ecological Knowledge alongside Western science) to manage fire. Fire management was a key driver in the production of bush tucker (wild food) resources and affected other cultural and ecological values. A need for increased education and awareness about Indigenous burning was consistently emphasised. To address this, the project participants co-produced the Yugul Mangi Faiya En Sisen Kelenda (Yugul Mangi Fire and Seasons Calendar) that drew on Indigenous knowledge of seasonal biocultural indicators to guide the rangers' fire management planning.

In northern New South Wales, the Banbai people are in the process of renewing their cultural fire management at Wattleridge IPA. Chapter 4 described this reintroduction of cultural burning and its impact on the cultural keystone species, the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). Banbai rangers and non-Indigenous scientists conducted crosscultural monitoring using a Before–After–Control–Impact (BACI) experimental design to measure echidna activity and key habitat features. Results indicated that the low intensity cultural fire in Wattleridge IPA did not impact the echidna or its habitat, whereas a nearby higher intensity fire in Warra National Park reduced echidna foraging area, possibly to avoid predation.

Cross-cultural monitoring and BACI design was also used to monitor the impact of cultural burning versus wildfire on the threatened plant, Backwater grevillea (Grevillea scortechinii subsp. sarmentosa) at Wattleridge IPA. As described in Chapter 5, cultural burning resulted in less mature grevillea mortality and less impact on reproductive output than wildfire. Both fires stimulated a mass germination event but the cultural burn preserved a multi-aged population while the wildfire killed 99.6% of mature shrubs. Careful management is needed to avoid local extinction of the grevillea following the impact of wildfire. In this case, the Banbai rangers adopted the grevillea into their cultural management framework in order to conserve it. Quantitative assessment of fuel load changes resulting from cultural burning, hazard reduction and wildfire indicated that fuel loads were reduced by all fire treatments, although the cultural burn was less severe than other fires.

Chapter 6 aimed to synthesise evidence from various knowledges (archaeological, ethnohistorical, traditional Indigenous, ecological, cross-cultural and local) to co-produce Winba = Fire (Banbai Fire and Seasons Calendar). This chapter demonstrated the sharing and weaving of different knowledge systems through numerous iterations of action learning cycles to form a multiple evidence base to guide the Banbai rangers' cultural fire management at Wattleridge IPA.

The aim of Chapter 7 was to compare the impact on dry sclerophyll vegetation of cultural burning at Wattleridge IPA with hazard reduction burning at Warra National Park. Composition, cover, abundance and species richness of dry sclerophyll vegetation was compared using a BACI design. This study found that low severity cultural burning and moderate severity hazard reduction burning did not have a significant impact on full floristics or herbaceous vegetation. Only the hazard reduction burn had a significant impact on shrub and juvenile tree (woody species) cover and composition. The abundance of woody species was significantly affected by both fires, driven by a mass germination of 'seeder' species, particularly after the cultural burn. The long unburnt fire regime at Wattleridge IPA may have made vegetation communities more responsive to fire than the more frequently burnt vegetation at Warra National Park, such that the cultural burn had a greater impact on woody species abundance.

In conclusion, this study provided quantitative and qualitative evidence of some of the cultural, social, ecological and wildfire management outcomes of Indigenous cultural fire management. Cultural burning promoted regeneration, did not burn the canopy, reduced fuel loads and had less impact on wildlife habitat than other fires. Cultural burning brings not only a practice of fire management, but a holistic philosophy that underpins how land, wildlife, people and the cosmos interrelate. This study was limited to two case studies and provided locally specific results, which could be transferable and investigated on a larger scale through an expanded research program. Future research should prioritise supporting Indigenous research priorities and methodologies, which have been clearly articulated. This study demonstrated that Indigenous cultural fire knowledge and practice is alive, even in areas where the impacts of colonisation were severe, and is able to be renewed under supportive circumstances. This process of revitalising culture, caring for Country and co-producing knowledge is relevant for many Indigenous communities around the world. With wildfire issues escalating, Indigenous fire and land management is now recognised, locally and globally, as one component of a multi-faceted solution, which must also address issues such as climate change and disaster management. The transdisciplinary, collective knowledge coproduced through this study will be well-suited to increasingly complex, volatile and unpredictable conditions of the Pyrocene, due to its dynamic and adaptive nature.

Connecting people with nature improves well-being, but how people connect with natural places is not well documented. We asked 43 people (19 Aboriginal Australians, 24 non-Aboriginal people) about the messages they received from Country during an interactive experience in the remote Mungo National Park, Australia, and analysed the physical senses, emotions and cognitive processes they mentioned. The physical senses mentioned by most respondents were sight, hearing and motion (particularly walking). These senses helped people receive messages from Country and connect with place. We used the primary-process emotional systems of Panksepp [2010. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 12 (4), 533–545] as a framework to capture the emotional dimension of experience. Most people reported positive emotions; they spoke about being nurtured by the group and the land (CARE), and the intense joy (PLAY) of being part of the community, being on Country and being accompanied by Aboriginal people. However, our results indicate the framework does not capture the breadth of positive emotions, particularly those associated with connection to place and spiritual experiences. Both groups mentioned cognitive processes reflecting their beliefs, existing knowledge, or sharing and acquiring new knowledge. Our results indicate that the emotional dimension of experience has the potential to measure connection to place, and provide a subjective measure of well-being. More research is needed to document this dimension of experience, and how it changes with context. Our case study provides further insight for those who manage protected areas and seek to enrich the experience of visitors.