The Regime: Fire and Human-Landscape Involvement

ABSTRACT In the southwest of Western Australia, the state Parks and Wildlife Service carry out prescribed burns with the goal of reducing ‘fuel loads’ and creating landscape patterns that they hope will slow down the spread of bushfires. These practices can contribute to establishing ‘a fire regime’, a tenuous state, which must be continually upheld, in which the forest tends to burn in certain ways. The regime is a model for human-environment involvement that highlights attempts to be favourably involved with landscapes that are sometimes dangerous and often unpredictable. This shows one example of a complicated pattern of involvement in today’s world. Often thought of as a time of distance and forceful disconnection, the Anthropocene also contains numerous examples of complicated attempts to maintain close ties with landscapes. This article develops ‘involvements’ as a lens for understanding cases like these, where people deliberately attempt to shape landscapes but do not have complete control over or insight into the paths from intention to effect. Involvements can shed light on how people live in the uncertain space between intention, action and effect; how they stretch themselves out across time, how they open themselves to being affected and how they create for themselves certain forms of knowledge and understanding. For fire managers, practices of burning, planning, patrolling and making themselves familiar with the forest all contribute to creating an interface with the fiery and dangerous landscape.