Scientists blame Captain Cook for Australia’s deadly mega-fires – more than 250 years after he arrived on the continent

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Published: 05:29 EDT, 8 October 2026 | Updated: 05:42 EDT, 8 October 2026

Scientists have blamed Captain Cook for Australia’s recent wave of deadly mega-fires, more than 250 years after the British Royal Navy officer arrived on the continent.

Researchers say that colonisation, rather than climate change, has primed Australia’s countryside for uncontrollable bushfires.

According to a new study, published in the journal Nature, Aboriginal ‘cultural burning’ practices kept fires under control for thousands of years prior to the arrival of white colonists.

However, after the ‘massacre’ of indigenous people brought these practices to a halt, the nation’s woodlands began to fill with highly flammable new growth.

This ‘loaded’ the forests with fuel, transforming once-managed open forests into dense tinderboxes that are routinely incinerated by uncontrollable wildfires.

Lead author Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher, of the University of Melbourne, says: ‘The forest we protect there is in fact a product of colonisation, and it’s that legacy that now imperils its very survival.’

Scientists have blamed Captain Cook for Australia’s recent wave of deadly mega-fires, more than 250 years after the British Royal Navy officer arrived on the continent. Pictured: A portrait of James Cook painted in 1776

Australia has faced an increasing number of deadly wildfires, including the 2019 to 2020 Black Summer fires (pictured), which killed 33 people and destroyed over 3,000 homes

Over the last few decades, Australia has been facing an increasing risk from devastating wildfires.

The recovery time between wildfires has collapsed from roughly 40 years between major blazes in the 1800s to just five years in the last decade.

And with a growing Super El Niño forecast to bring record temperatures, scientists are anxiously anticipating another devastating fire season next year.

During the 2019 to 2020 ‘Black Summer’ fires alone, 33 people were killed, 3,000 homes were destroyed, over three billion animals were killed or displaced, and a staggering 93,000 square miles (24 million hectares) of land were burned.

Part of what made this so shocking is that these fires even affected wild areas that seemed to have every possible protection in place.

As Professor Fletcher points out, the Croajingolong National Park, in Victoria, is a national park, a designated wilderness area and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

And yet the Black Summer fires still ripped their way through 90 per cent of the park.

In fact, this seemingly pristine wilderness has now become one of the most frequently incinerated forests in Australia.

For many scientists, the obvious explanation is climate change: as the planet gets hotter, more dry vegetation builds up and the risk of wildfires starting and spreading increases.

However, Professor Fletcher and his co-authors believe this is only one part of the story.

After the arrival of white colonists in the 1800s, the amount of charcoal produced by wildfires sharply increased due to the end of Aboriginal controlled burning practices

Without regular burns, intense fires drive rapid regrowth of dense, flammable vegetation, which primes the next major blaze in a ‘catastrophic wildfire loop’. Pictured: The 2019 Black Summer wildfires

The researchers don’t deny that climate change is now making the wildfire risk worse, but instead suggest the problem started well before humans started to alter the planet.

‘The transformation towards forest and evidence of hotter fire began well before recent climate change,’ Professor Fletcher told the Daily Mail.

‘Aboriginal people used frequent, small-scale cultural burning to care for Country. These cool fires suppressed seedling recruitment, maintained open woodland and created a diverse landscape of differently aged vegetation.’

He adds: ‘When Country is cared for, climate does not dictate wildfire.

‘When colonisation ended that care, the forest expanded and thickened across the region, loading the landscape with fuel. It is that transformation that has handed control of fire to climate.’

The outcome is what the scientists call a ‘catastrophic wildfire loop’, as each hot fire drives the regrowth of thick, flammable foliage that primes the next fire.

To support this idea, the researchers gathered sediment samples from Lake Purghagoolah inside the Croajingolong National Park.

This sample recorded 1,000 years of the park’s history in layers of soil, pollen, and charcoal.

The pollen allowed the researchers to see what was growing, the layers of charcoal told them when fires happened, and infrared analysis of the charcoal revealed how hot those fires were.

They discovered that frequent, low-temperature burning by the indigenous GunaiKurnai people maintained the land as stable, open woodland.

Analysing charcoal fragments found in lake sediment, researchers found a significant increase in extremely hot fires after the arrival of colonists in the 1800s

Fire seasons as devastating as the Black Summer or Ash Wednesday fires did occur over these centuries, but the land being cared for with routine burning didn’t experience any catastrophic fires.

However, the record showed a dramatic change in the 1800s as frontier violence and massacres removed the GunaiKurnai people from the land.

After this point, the last 200 years of sediment records show that the shrub cover thickened and eucalyptus cover increased to four times pre-colonial levels, coming to resemble the fire-prone forests we see today.

At the same time, hot fires began to dominate, and the scientists discovered sediments washed in from the barren, scorched ground that followed devastating blazes.

As a solution, the researchers advocate for learning from Aboriginal practices and returning to managed regular burning in areas that could benefit from the management.

While this won’t prevent fires from happening as the climate continues to warm, Professor Fletcher suggests it could mitigate the impacts and reduce the likelihood of ‘high-intensity’ fires.

GunaiKurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett, from GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Corporation, said that GunaiKurnai Ancestors were born with ‘towera’ (fire), which was deeply woven into their practical daily life.

He says: ‘Studies such as this provide firm scientific evidence to support towera land management initiatives for Country.’