ACT Parks and Conservation are using a tens-of-thousands year old method to help Canberra's native animals and plants and it's relatively simple.
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Aboriginal fire project officer Dean Freeman's technique means taking one match to a clump of exotic grass and letting it burn.
Mr Freeman said it destroyed the introduced grasses which prevent native animals from nesting thereby avoiding the use of toxic herbicides, it reduces the fuel load over bushfire season and allows native grasses to shoot back.
Mr Freeman, part of the Murrumbung Rangers, lead parks fire managers to conduct burn offs at the Jerrabomberra Wetlands on Wednesday,
Mr Freeman said contemporary hazard reductions would see firefighters use fuel to circle an area prescribed for burn off with the fire trapping any animals inside.
But this way firefighters could also start a fire at one point and control its path, allowing animals to escape from the front of it.
"Prior to contact we'd been doing that for 60,000 years; managing the landscapes through fire," Mr Freeman said.
"If we can do that we can get away from the chemical side of things."
"This is a good fire. It's about putting the right fire in the right place at the right time."
Wednesday's one hectare burn off was part of a five year project by parks to burn off 8.7 hectares of land at the wetlands.
Murrumbung Rangers had been overseeing cultural burn offs in the ACT since 2015.
The European grass, introduced to the wetlands area to feed European cattle, was too dense and native wetland birds or long-neck turtles had trouble moving through it or nesting in it.
By also avoiding the use of fuels, the fire burned at a lower intensity and more quickly, allowing the soil underneath to remain moist and keep seeds alive.
Mr Freeman indicated more intense fires would bake the soil about 30 centimetres deep, killing seedlings and destroying the soil.
With wet weather forecast later in the afternoon, Mr Freeman said the rain would remove the burned off grass and circulate nutrients in the soil.
Another one of the Murrumbung Rangers, general field officer Brenton Webster, used a clump of lit grass to help spread the flames.
"Fire is a tool," Mr Webster said.
"It's more what fire can bring. It protects stuff, it brings back the bush tuckers, it gathers people."
Near where rangers were conducting burns offs at the wetlands was a section of land they'd performed similar burns in Autumn.
The grass there was green and mosaic with tussock, which Mr Freeman said serve as a better habitat to the migratory snipe.
Mr Freeman pointed to a pond near Dairy Road surrounded by the similar exotic grass, he said they would burn off the grasses which gave the turtle easier access to the pond.
"Even though we call it a cultural burn it is a risk mitigation burn so it does get rid of fuel off the ground," Mr Freeman said.
