Alinytjara Wiluṟara Landscape Board highlights call to heal our lands and waters

The national call to Heal Australia’s Land, Seas and Waterways was launched last week by a group of First Nations and Natural Resource Management leaders, working with the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. It highlights the critical role of Indigenous Rangers, farmers, natural resource managers and volunteers in delivering the work required to restore Country, and that a significant escalation in funding is needed.

Kim Krebs, GM for AWLB said that both traditional land management and sustainable food and fibre production is at risk if we continue to neglect the required investment and action needed to have nature positive outcomes. “The Global Nature Positive Summit is a tremendous opportunity to turn good intentions into actions, and more importantly, meaningful funding for the work that is so urgently required on Country,” she says.

AWLB Chair Brenz Saunders said there is growing recognition that Australia is facing increasing challenges from extreme events and the declining health and sustainable productivity of our lands, seas and waters.

“Aṉangu have known for thousands of years that the health of Country is fundamental to the health and flourishing of people, communities and culture, something that is as relevant today as it ever was,” Mr Saunders said. “Across the Alinytjara Wilurara region we know that our efforts to reduce feral predators and invasive buffel grass are improving the health and productivity of our Country, but we could be doing so much more with funding that is commensurate with the urgency and magnitude of the task.”

Mr Saunders said the Alinytjara Wiluṟara Landscape Board fully supported the Statement in its call to:

● Recognise that the work done in this region and community to care for Country and heal our land and waterscapes is an essential service, and

● Support Australia’s existing regional natural resource management framework as the most effective mechanism to plan, implement and scale nature repair.

● Invest to establish a national Indigenous environmental voice that empowers place-based Indigenous-led decision making

● Establish a national financing mechanism to fund the scaling and strengthening of achievements to date]

The call is in response to a major report by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists which maps out a thirty-year investment program that will reverse Australia’s landscape decline.

CEO of NRM Regions Australia, Dr Kate Andrews, one of the joint statement’s co-authors, said “The Wentworth Group’s Blueprint reaffirms that we not only need to restore Country, we need to do it now. Our economic prosperity and wellbeing are at serious risk from the declining health of our land, seas and waters.”

“The repair work is already underway so we absolutely know how to do it, and we know Australia can afford it. We cannot afford to do nothing.”

Finding wildlife at Yellabinna Regional Reserve – South Australia

Each year Alinytjara Wiluṟara Landscape Board and the Far West Coast Aboriginal Corporation head to Yellabinna Regional Reserve to find out how the wildlife are faring, where they are living, and the habitat they need to thrive. Species like the Mitchell’s hopping mouse, the sandy inland mouse, the western pygmy possum and the wide-eyed sandhill dunnart all call the reserve home.

While it looks a bit like a mouse, the endangered sandhill dunnart is actually a carnivore like its cousin the Tasmanian devil, living on insects, spiders and even small reptiles. They are only found in four small, isolated areas, in South Australia and Western Australia, so these surveys to find them and check their habitat are critical to helping them survive.

Sandhill dunnart habitat is under threat from the invasive ecological transformer weed, buffel grass. Buffel grass completely displaces native grasses such as spinifex, which are essential for so many of the native species found in Australia’s deserts, and the AWLB is leading a state-wide multi-agency response to the threat, as well as controlling fox and cat numbers in the area.

In May this year, students from Ceduna Area School joined the crew, helping check the monitoring traps and measuring spinifex around where the crew found dunnarts. The spiky plants help protect the dunnarts from predators, so these measurements help ensure the dunnarts have enough cover as they dart around.

Involving the students in the surveys is inspiring a new generation to consider careers in conservation and parks and wildlife.

“The camp is always a highlight as the students love getting out in the field and experiencing what it’s like to work in the industry,” the leader of the school group, outdoor education teacher Jonty Doudle, said of the experience. “It also gives the students the chance to see some of the lesser known native Australian animals, giving them a personal connection to the environment.”

See video from the trip and learn more about AWLB’s sandhill dunnart surveys here: https://www.landscape.sa.gov.au/aw/projects/sandhill-dunnarts

For more information on the Global Nature Positive Summit: https://www.dcceew.gov.au/initiatives/nature-summit-2024