326 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
management program for the Slater’s skink for the past 9 years. The monitoring
program conducted by the Central Land Council’s Ltyentye Apurte Rangers was
initiated to assess the effectiveness of land management activities on the Slater’s
skink. Monitoring targets a population that occurs on an Indigenous pastoral
property, and was designed in anticipation that a destocking program to improve
land condition may inadvertently accelerate the spread of buffel grass. Over the
years, the program has provided information on the status and threats impacting
this population of Slater’s skinks and motivated new management initiatives.
The monitoring program has been conducted within an adaptive management
framework. It involves systematic surveys of transects for Slater’s skink burrows
with assessment of skink occupation and impacts of buffel grass and large
herbivores. Monitoring is tied explicitly with management. Through monitoring,
the Ranger group has been able to respond to disturbances affecting the skink
population. For example, when monitoring revealed increased encroachment of
buffel grass in the study area in 2010, the Rangers instigated a weed management
program. Each year since, when buffel grass is detected at monitoring sites, it is
either sprayed with herbicide or physically removed to prevent this invasive grass
from colonising core Slater’s skink habitat. More recently, Rangers responded to an
increase in disturbance to burrows by large herbivores by building an exclusion
fence around an area that previously supported a high density of Slater’s skink
burrows. Pride in their fence has motivated the Rangers to return to the
monitoring area each year to check the integrity of the fence and the status of the
skink population.
Although all management actions for this project have been planned and
implemented by the Indigenous land management organisation, the monitoring
component has been assisted by a long-term partnership with a freelance scientist
(RP) who has worked alongside the Rangers during the annual burrow surveys.
The scientist helps to maintain consistency in monitoring effort, and collates the
data after each survey to report back to the Rangers. The Rangers have requested
that a slide show is presented on the first night of each field trip to update
everyone on the progress of the project and provide broader context to the
monitoring program.
Discussion
The benefits of cross-cultural connections between IBK and Western approaches
for natural resource management and threatened species conservation are
increasingly being realised. Good partnerships encourage the development of new
ways to tackle common issues (Fig. 25.1). For a researcher, a collaborative
monitoring program with Indigenous people facilitates access to a rich source of
historical and contemporary knowledge, opportunities to engage with diverse skill