During the summer of 2019–2020, half of Australia’s third largest island was on fire. Kangaroo Island, also known as Karta Pintingga or Karti in local mainland Aboriginal languages, was one of the worst-hit places during the Black Summer fires. Two people lost their lives and almost all the remnant vegetation on the island burned.

In the wake of the fires, fears grew for unique species that live on the island, such as the green carpenter bee, a critically endangered dunnart, and the Kangaroo Island micro-trapdoor spider.

Increasingly unstable climate conditions are exacerbating fire risk across the globe. Since the Black Summer fires six years ago, we’ve seen many more megafires as far north as the Canadian Arctic. Every fire season in Australia brings more devastation as well.

In the months following the 2020 fires, we headed to Lashmars Lagoon on the Dudley Peninsula, eastern Kangaroo Island. Here, trapped within the mud, are thousands upon thousands of charcoal fragments built up over time from ancient fires. By analysing them we could reconstruct valuable long-term context for what’s happening today.

Our findings, now published in Global and Planetary Change, tell a complex 7,000-year-long story of how fire was shaped by the climate,........

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