25 – Threatened species monitoring on Aboriginal land^325Following a coordinated effort to design and implement track-based-
monitoring (Moseby et al. 2009), which coincided with funding support from
regional bodies, there was a strong uptake of the track-based-monitoring method
by at least 10 Indigenous Ranger groups within the current extent of the bilby. The
track-based method is effective because it builds on existing tracking skills and
provides a systematic, repeatable, rapid survey approach that can be used to survey
bilbies and some of their key threats (cats, foxes and rabbits) over large areas.
Although most Ranger groups apply a similar approach to conducting presence/
absence surveys within 2 ha plots, the design of the over-arching monitoring
program varies between groups, outputs are mixed and rarely incorporated into
management programs.
A continuing challenge is to coordinate information between different groups
to gain a national picture of bilby status. Although many Ranger groups have
conducted surveys for bilbies, the data have never been compiled to give a national
snapshot of its status, or rarely even interpreted at a local scale to assist groups with
their management decisions. To keep Ranger teams engaged with monitoring,
there is a pressing need to interpret and contextualise monitoring data as it is
collected, both at the local scale as it relates to management actions Traditional
Owners can enact, and at the national scale to give broader context. Initiatives such
as the recent Indigenous Bilby Festival (June 2016) that involved 120 Indigenous
Rangers from across the deserts have helped to re-invigorate enthusiasm for
monitoring and managing wild bilby populations. The Bilby Festival brought
together Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices to celebrate the cultural
significance of the bilby, offered a forum for Indigenous peoples from across
Australia to share their stories or concerns, and provided attendees with a broader
scale perspective on bilby conservation from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous
perspectives. A key outcome of the Bilby Festival was agreement from Ranger
groups across the distribution of the bilby to work towards collaborating in a
national monitoring program for bilbies across Australia (‘Bilby Blitz’).
Case study 2: monitoring the Slater’s skink Liopholis slateri
In contrast to the widely distributed bilby, the Slater’s skink has a very restricted
range, and is known only from 10 sites within a 150 km radius of Alice Springs in
the Northern Territory. Its distribution includes both national parks and
Indigenous lands, where the major threatening processes are habitat modification
resulting from broad-scale encroachment of the introduced buffel grass Cenchrus
ciliaris and the impacts of introduced herbivores (Pavey 2004). The Slater’s skink is
listed as Endangered under Commonwealth legislation.
Despite its lack of public profile and apparently negligible cultural significance,
at least one Indigenous Ranger group has maintained a monitoring and