330 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
used to support Indigenous knowledge and aspirations and document the benefits
of Indigenous Ranger work. Fundamentally, monitoring programs need to have
value to the local Indigenous community, and provide funding for community
members to participate in a meaningful way.
We look forward to the day when the majority of threatened species monitoring
programs on Indigenous lands are initiated by Traditional Owners based on their
own objectives, rather than scientists asking Indigenous people to help them
answer western science questions, as is currently the dominant approach to
partnerships (see Barbour and Schlesinger 2012).
Lessons learned
● (^) Take time to build relationships, establish trust and find common ground.
● (^) Prioritise understanding of, and respect for, Indigenous peoples, their
intellectual property, cultural practices and Jukurrpa.
Fig. 25.3. Nolia Ward, Rachel Paltridge and Payu West collecting bilby scats for DNA analysis. On the
Kiwirrkurra Indigenous Protected Area, two methods are being used to estimate abundance of bilbies at
management sites: interpretation of tracks by expert trackers and genetic analysis of scats collected along
transects. Genetic analysis found evidence of four individual bilbies at this site, where expert trackers had
already identified the presence of a healthy adult male, a ‘crippled’ male with a limp, a female and two
different sized juveniles. Photo: Central Desert Native Title Services.