Guided by First Nations Knowledge and science, selective tree removal can bring resilience, biodiversity, and cultural meaning back to Country.
Cutting down trees to save the forest? It sounds backwards – until you see what’s happening. Our forests are suffocating. Crammed with regrowth, stripped of cultural fire, and burning hotter than ever. The truth is, doing nothing is destroying them. Selective tree removal, guided by First Nations practices and science, can bring forests back to life. It helps elder trees grow, protects wildlife, stores carbon, and prevents megafires. This isn’t logging. It’s healing. It’s time to manage forests like we care about their future.
Restoring forest structure through ecological thinning
Ecological thinning involves the deliberate removal of select trees to reduce overcrowding, allowing remaining trees to access the light, nutrients and water they need to become strong and resilient. This process is essential in landscapes that have been heavily altered by colonial-era harvesting, fire suppression, and a “lock it up” conservation mindset. These interventions have caused forests to become overly dense and homogenous, placing them at risk of collapse under stress from drought, disease, or fire.
Ecological thinning can restore open forest structures that were historically maintained by Indigenous fire practices. These fire regimes, applied across generations, created mosaics of tree densities and fuel loads that supported both biodiversity and cultural life. As Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher notes, “fire was used not to destroy Country but to care for it, to renew it”¹. Without such disturbance regimes, forest structure and function are fundamentally altered, with consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage.
Recruiting the next generation of elder trees
In many First Nations traditions, individual trees are seen not merely as habitat, but as kin. They are called knowledge trees, mother trees, or elder trees, depending on language group. These are the towering eucalypts, sheoaks or acacias that carry deep ecological and cultural meaning. But the formation of such trees takes centuries – and they need space to grow.
According to Uncle Dean Kelly, a Yuin-Dunghutti elder and cultural fire practitioner, “an elder tree doesn’t grow in the middle of a thicket – it grows with breathing space, nourished by fire and time.”² When regrowth is too dense, potential elder trees cannot develop the large hollows and complex structure required to support both ecological and cultural functions. Thinning surrounding competition helps ensure these trees can fulfil their role in the landscape, as habitats, carbon sinks, and cultural touchstones.
Fire resilience and carbon considerations
Dense forests, while appearing lush, are vulnerable to high-intensity fires due to the buildup of fuels. Thinning, especially when combined with cultural burning, reduces fuel loads and enhances fire safety while supporting habitat diversity. Restored pyrodiversity – variation in fire frequency and intensity – has been shown to promote ecological resilience across Australian biomes³.
On the carbon front, thinning can improve long-term carbon stability. Overcrowded forests tend to suffer higher mortality during extreme events, releasing carbon abruptly. In contrast, promoting fewer but larger trees increases forest carbon resilience. When thinned material is used in durable wood products or converted to biochar, much of the carbon is stored for decades or more⁴.
Respecting cultural and ecological timeframes
Restoring forests is not just about quick carbon gains or fuel reduction – it’s about returning agency to Country. Professor Fletcher argues that many contemporary forest structures are colonial artefacts, not expressions of deep-time forest dynamics. His work emphasises the importance of returning management to Traditional Owners and reintroducing practices such as patch burning and thinning to restore health to Country⁵.
Ecological thinning, in this view, becomes more than a silvicultural tool – it becomes part of the healing process for landscapes and communities alike⁶.
References:
¹ Fletcher, M-S, Hall, TE & Alexandra, AN 2021, The loss of an Indigenous constructed landscape following British invasion of Australia: An insight into the deep human imprint on the Australian landscape, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 278–287,
² Uncle Dean Kelly (Yuin-Dunghutti elder), cultural fire practitioner. Direct quote as attributed in article, not from a published source.
³ Fletcher, M-S et al. 2021, Indigenous knowledge and the ecology of fire, Fire, vol. 4, no. 3, article 61,
⁴ Keith, H, Lindenmayer, D, Mackey, B, Blair, D, Carter, L & McBurney, L 2015, Managing temperate forests for carbon and biodiversity, Ecological Applications, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 405–419,
⁵ Fletcher, M-S et al. 2021, Indigenous knowledge and the ecology of fire, Fire, vol. 4, no. 3, article 61,
⁶ Fletcher, M-S, Hall, TE & Alexandra, AN 2021, The loss of an Indigenous constructed landscape following British invasion of Australia, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 278–287,
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