322 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
projects in the Australian deserts. Although scientists and Ranger teams may have
different motivations and capacities for conducting monitoring, common ground
can be found through shared interests in Kuka (food animals), Jukurrpa (The
Dreaming/Law), Ranger work and science, if respectful participatory approaches are
adopted. Through partnerships and community liaison, scientists can provide
broader conservation context for Ranger-led monitoring programs, find ways to
incorporate traditional skills and knowledge into systematic monitoring projects,
and help Ranger groups interpret their monitoring results; Indigenous Rangers can
determine how best to integrate the new information and techniques with their own
knowledge systems to ensure protection of the resources that are important to them.
Introduction
Indigenous peoples are responsible for the management of extensive tracts of
Australia that protect important heritage areas and numerous threatened species.
Some of these threatened species are now largely confined to Indigenous lands,
either because they are specialists of country that has never been claimed for
other purposes (e.g. the great desert skink Liopholis kintorei, which is endemic to
the western deserts), or were formerly more widespread but have fared poorly
where Indigenous land management has been replaced with other land uses
(e.g. the greater bilby Macrotis lagotis, black-f lanked rock-wallaby Petrogale
lateralis lateralis).
Indigenous people have a vital role to play in the conservation of threatened
species. Although Indigenous land tenure is often extremely remote and
inaccessible, Traditional Owners maintain their presence and inf luence from
communities and outstations from which they engage in hunting, burning and
other cultural practices that care for country. There is growing evidence that these
practices play a key role in encouraging on-going persistence of native species on
Indigenous lands (Bird et al. 2013). Establishment of Indigenous Ranger programs
has facilitated an extension of management practices further from communities,
and often involved two-way science approaches (combining Indigenous and
non-Indigenous knowledge and methods) to expand the practices that are available
to communities to manage country.
Over recent years, there have been increasing attempts to integrate Indigenous
biocultural knowledge (IBK) and western science to inf luence natural resource
management including monitoring of threatened species. It can be a complex
challenge to integrate Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge and objectives in
natural resource management in a way that is respectful and recognises the equal
value of both perspectives (Ens et al. 2015). IBK (see definition in Ens et al. 2015)
and connection to country has many complex layers and interrelationships with
ecology, identity, kinship, social organisation and law; distinctions between nature