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How can a desert burn? Australia's vast deserts aren't just sand dunes—they're often dotted with flammable spinifex grass hummocks. When heavy rains fall, grass grows quickly before drying out. That's how a desert can burn.

When our Karajarri and Ngurrara ancestors lived nomadic lifestyles in what's now called the Great Sandy Desert in northwestern Australia, they lit many small fires in spinifex grass as they walked.

Fires were used seasonally for ceremonies, signaling to others, flushing out animals, making travel easier (spinifex is painfully sharp), cleaning campsites, and stimulating fresh vegetation growth ready for foraging or luring game when people returned a few months later. The result was a patchwork desert.

After colonization, this ended. Without management, the spinifex and grassy deserts began to burn in some of the largest fires in Australia.

But now the work of caring for desert country (pirra) with fire (jungku, or warlu) has begun again. We are Karajarri and Ngurrara rangers who care for 110,000 square kilometers of the Great Sandy Desert. Our techniques have changed—we now drop incendiaries from helicopters to cover more distance—but our goals are similar. Guided by our elders, we are combining traditional knowledge with modern technologies and science to refine how we manage fire in a changing world.

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