A presentation to the TERN Symposium 2011

Indigenous Land Management

Presented by: David Robertson – Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities

Overview

Why Indigenous land management should not be overlooked Australian Government programs CyberTracker – a project to collect better quality biophysical data What role might TERN play?

CyberTracker

Software developed for local trackers in southern Africa. Designed to avoid problems with language and literacy. Icon based & procedural. Encouraging take-up by Indigenous ranger groups in Australia.

Data Collection

1.Threatened species

2. WoNS

3. Fire management

CLC CyberTracker application:

Animal tracking

Weeds

Pastoral Monitoring

Miscellaneous

Bush Food

Rock Wallaby Survey

Slater’s Skink Survey

Feral Control

Quandong Mapping

Aerial Survey

Data standards such as national core attributes for data collection

Facilitate aggregation of data at a national scale

Opportunities for collaboration eg translating standards to CyberTracker applications

Indigenous land management considerations

Access to Indigenous owned or managed land Community needs and desires Data ownership and sharing arrangements Building capacity / empowering communities Information flows back to communities Reliant on continued funding

Summary points A key focus of Australian Government environment programs is to improve monitoring and reporting on Australia’s environmental assets including on Indigenous owned or managed lands. The Government has established a project to increase the quality and consistency of biophysical data collected on these lands (CyberTracker Project). The project would be enhanced by having an established framework to draw from (data standards, data sharing agreements, existing benchmarks, collaboration framework, standardised training framework, common tools for analysis.)