Hunting hypothesis

We've heard (and talked) a lot about how hunting by the Clovis peoples may have led to the mass extinctions of the Pleistocene and shaped the modern fauna of North America. Apparently, aboriginal Martu hunters in Australia's Western Desert are doing some shaping of their own. There aren't many of them - 800 or so. But their habit of setting the brush afire to flush their favored prey, the monitor lizards they call goanna, is reshaping the region and its biodiversity. The Martu have an easier time finding goanna in freshly burned plots. So, they routinely burn small patches of desert brush and turn the habitat into a patchwork of freshly burned plots and areas of recovering vegetation. The resulting mosaic turns out to be ideal to support high biodiversity in the region.

Now, here's an interesting scenario. To facilitate discussion about this rather unusual case of humans actually living in apparent harmony with a natural system, a group of Martu will travel to a conference at Stanford for an upcoming conference. There's a meeting that I'd like to see.