Ten Commitments: Reshaping the Lucky Country's Environment

ECOSYSTEMS

DESERTS

Steve Morton

1. Recognise the primacy of Indigenous interests through policy support.

2. Assist creation of resilient Indigenous settlements.

3. Develop reliable, meaningful and cheap measures of biodiversity and ecosystem health for a vast landscape.

4. Further develop the Indigenous Protected Areas program to ensure transparent achievement of natural resource benefits and integration with Aboriginal cultural life.

5. Manage outback adventure tourism so that it continues to prosper by providing a unique sense of space while benefiting Indigenous people.

6. Further engage resource companies in achieving sustainability.

7. Develop new approaches to the challenge of feral camels.

8. Invest in the next generation of rabbit control.

9. Choose natural assets to be targeted for fire management.

10. Attract philanthropic investors to a visionary program of large refuges for the original mammal fauna.

Introduction

The Australian deserts lie beyond the fences. They are the lands that proved too tough for European settlement, too poor to support the cattle and sheep that elsewhere have transformed our perception of the country from desert into rangeland. If the rangelands are the outback, the deserts are the far outback.

Some of this terrain possesses names familiar to many Australians, such as the Simpson Desert. Other areas may not be so widely known – the Gibson, Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Tanami deserts. The deserts comprise 2 million km² of red sand. Sometimes the sand is swept into ridges, whereas in others there is featureless sandplain. Occasional rocky outcrops sometimes shed enough water after rain to create small creeks, and a few rivers penetrate from outside, but they all peter out. Three ecological features stand out: there is very little surface water; the leached sands are among the least fertile soils of our continent; and yet the country is covered with a wealth of plant life. The harsh physical background leads to a tiny human population. Of the 350 000 residents of inland Australia only about 40 000 live in the deserts. Many among the few non-Indigenous people fly in and out of mining camps. The vast majority of residents are Aboriginal people, who live on their traditional lands on scattered settlements, often far out into the country. The land is not ‘empty’; it is Aboriginal land.

Infertility and lack of water have resulted in the deserts being only marginally affected by European-style land uses and, hence, by the environmental changes experienced elsewhere in Australia. There is no commercial grazing and no land clearing, but there are ecological challenges from wildfire, weeds and feral animals, and the future risks of climate change. As a result, the potential exists for one of the last great natural spaces on the face of the planet to be conserved in association with one of the oldest human cultures. The following 10 points explore this unusual combination of environmental and social conditions.

Key issues

1. Recognise the primacy of Indigenous interests through policy support

I have two aspects of Indigenous interest in mind. Firstly, ownership of most of the deserts by Aboriginal people is a reality through various titles, and the remaining areas of Crown Land may be expected to come under native title. Australia has legally recognised what our Indigenous compatriots have long argued, that their custodianship of these lands is vested in them through the Jukurrpa. The Jukurrpa (from Anmatyerre, with equivalents in other languages) is the body of knowledge and beliefs about creation of the country, and the moral code or law for desert Aboriginal people. Consequently, any natural resource management simply must start from the premise that Indigenous views are vitally significant.

Second, Aboriginal people are the principal long-term residents. Although estimates are not easily matched to the definitions of the deserts used, the residential population of remote Australia is nearly 50% Indigenous, a proportion predicted to increase (Taylor 2006). Aboriginal people want to live in the deserts to a far greater degree than other Australians, and consequently they comprise the obvious workforce for activities that are culturally meaningful to them, such as natural resource management. In short, future policy for natural resource management would be strengthened greatly by recognition of the primacy of Indigenous interests, and in my view this constitutes the most significant challenge among all the points mentioned here.

2. Assist creation of resilient Indigenous settlements

Debate about appropriate policies for remote Indigenous settlements is intense and topical (for the contrasts, see Altman 2006; Hughes 2007; Stafford Smith et al. 2008). I wish to make only one point within this much larger context – that without resilient settlements the chances of Indigenous people being able to undertake natural resource management are slim, and that their involvement in such work could in turn help create the desired resilience.

Indigenous people bring invaluable traditional ecological knowledge to natural resource management, and offer a much more cost-effective alternative to government than using personnel from outside the deserts. Aboriginal people are well equipped through their remarkable skills, commitment, and location to undertake such work (Altman et al. 2007). Yet if people are not resident on their lands, then obviously there are fewer opportunities to exercise these skills. In turn, involvement in such activities may well assist in developing resilience by creating healthier people (Burgess et al. 2005). Such work is inherently of value in Aboriginal eyes. If it can be linked effectively with wider cultural interests then it is even more desirable and rewarding (Davies et al. 2008). Policies that support resilient settlements and those that develop deep Indigenous engagement in natural resource management may be mutually supportive.

3. Develop reliable, meaningful and cheap measures of biodiversity and ecosystem health for a vast landscape

The effectiveness of natural resource management in any region of Australia must be measurable. This imperative requires special attention in the deserts, where people and resources are dramatically fewer per unit area. Biodiversity science has so far not served policy well because, in general, it fails to provide reliable, meaningful, and cheap measurement at appropriate scales. Smyth and James (2004) made substantial progress in distilling too wide a variety of potential indicators into a conceptually manageable total. Policy makers should continue to pressure the scientific community to develop applicable monitoring tools, because benefits will only flow from sound implementation born of the most reliable data.

4. Further develop the Indigenous Protected Areas program to ensure transparent achievement of natural resource benefits and integration with Aboriginal cultural life

The Commonwealth Government’s Indigenous Protected Areas program is a particularly apt response to the opportunity presented by Aboriginal ownership of land, the skills of Indigenous people, and the conservation values of land only slightly modified from its pre-European condition. Six Protected Areas have been declared in the deserts, with three more under development (Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts 2008). The common ground between mainstream natural resource management and Aboriginal cultural aspirations gives cause for optimism; both strive to integrate environmental, social and economic values (Altman et al. 2007; Rea and Messner 2008). If natural resource management services can be delivered simultaneously with cultural activities, then conservation and Indigenous livelihoods will both benefit. If the cultural connections are strong, some of the tensions between Indigenous objectives and wider conservation goals can be resolved.

Three areas might be further developed. First, setting of measurable goals for Protected Area management and monitoring of effectiveness in achieving them deserve attention. Second, engagement of Aboriginal people can be increased if jobs contain valued cultural components. Rea and Messner (2008) report a telling comment by an Aboriginal person concerning failure to take up employment in the horticulture industry near Alice Springs ‘because there isn’t any Jukurrpa for grapes’. In contrast, most natural resource activities do not suffer from this challenge. Finally, transparent responsibility and accountability are required for investment of public funds (e.g. Stafford Smith et al. 2008).

5. Manage outback adventure tourism so that it continues to prosper by providing a unique sense of space while benefiting Indigenous people

Tourism with 4-wheel drive vehicles offers simultaneous potential for economic development in desert Australia and challenges in manageability. Among the challenges is management of the environmental and cultural impacts of this kind of tourism (Carson and Taylor 2008). Environmental management is essential for maintenance of the sense of isolation and undisturbed nature that is the very reason for the visitor’s attraction. The extent to which economic potential can be realised for Indigenous communities, thereby assisting in meeting point 2, does not appear well understood and requires policy attention.

6. Further engage resource companies in achieving sustainability

As the most economically significant industry of the deserts, mining has a powerful role in their future management. Most companies take their environmental responsibilities very seriously, and the need for restoration seems now to be taken for granted. Some companies are striving to boost Indigenous employment to assist in the objective expressed in point 2 (e.g. Rio Tinto 2008). Discussion continues about the environmental and social roles and responsibilities of extractive industries. The energy sector too may play an increasingly important role in helping to reduce the financial and emissions costs of electricity and liquid fuels, which are major considerations for natural resource management and Indigenous livelihoods.

7. Develop new approaches to the challenge of feral camels

Camel populations are growing explosively. In one of the first overviews of camels in Australia, McKnight (1969) predicted ‘a slow general decline in the overall population’. Regrettably he was wrong; estimates now suggest that in the camels’ desert strongholds there are as many as a million (Desert Knowledge CRC 2008). Numbers presently seem to be doubling about every eight years, and to be more persistent during droughts than other pests such as rabbits. The consequence is growing environmental damage through over-browsing in desert ecosystems, which hitherto have generally been spared the consequent undesirable change experienced in other parts of Australia. The Desert Knowledge CRC and its partners are now exploring options for dealing with this challenge, and policy makers would do well to follow these efforts closely.

8. Invest in the next generation of rabbit control

Rabbits demand attention precisely because they have dipped below our radar screens into the zone of a dangerous ‘sleeper’. Following the introduction of rabbit calicivirus (or haemorrhagic disease) in 1995, and the consequent dramatic reduction of arid-zone populations of rabbits (Cooke and Fenner 2002), most Government agencies have been able to turn their eyes and their resources towards other issues. The unfortunate upshot of this success is that my own agency, CSIRO, has been unable to maintain much of its expertise in rabbit biology; I was Chief of the relevant Division at the time when financial support for this work evaporated in the wake of calicivirus, and with great regret oversaw the closure of our research group. There can be no doubt that resistance to calicivirus will inevitably build up, just as it did following the earlier introduction of myxomatosis, and the rabbit will again afflict Australian ecosystems. Because of the particularly severe effect of rabbits on key fertile and vulnerable parts of the deserts, we should be preparing our responses now.

9. Choose natural assets to be targeted for fire management

Fire is a major force in the deserts because spinifex, a flammable grass, flourishes universally on the infertile sands. Spinifex re-grows over several years following a fire in response to subsequent rainfall. Indigenous people traditionally used fire to clear the spinifex away so as to encourage the growth of food plants, but their movement into settlements has resulted in burning shifting from smaller-scale fires towards wildfires (Burrows et al. 2006). Regional fire management strategies need to be developed to limit these wildfires (Edwards et al. 2008), for which two elements appear crucial. In a vast landscape and with thinly-spread resources, choices must be made about prioritising natural assets for management. Second, developing even greater Indigenous involvement, through Indigenous Protected Areas or otherwise, could provide many advantages.

10. Attract philanthropic investors to a visionary program of large refuges for the original mammal fauna

Australia’s deserts have not suffered the same degree of degradation that has characterised the rangelands, but they have lost as many as 30 species of medium-sized mammals (McKenzie et al. 2007). Fortunately, most of the species remain extant on off-shore islands. The idea of reintroductions to fenced mainland refuges has been widely discussed and although still technically challenging could well become achievable in future (Gillen et al. 2000; Department of Conservation and Land Management 2004). Indigenous interest is high because such animals have a prominent place in the Jukurrpa. Large-scale restoration may well be attractive to philanthropists committed to creating large-scale conservation impact in association with Indigenous people.

Conclusion

The Australian deserts constitute one of the last great natural spaces on the face of the planet. Simultaneously they are home to one of the oldest human cultures. This combination presents our nation with an extraordinary opportunity to husband and to benefit from that resource. It requires only modest financial resources and careful policy.

References

Altman JC (2006) In search of an outstations policy for Indigenous Australians. CAEPR Working Paper 34/2006, 1–22. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

Altman JC, Buchanan GJ and Larsen L (2007) The environmental significance of the Indigenous estate: natural resource management as economic development in remote Australia. CAEPR Discussion Paper 286/2007, 1–65. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

Burgess C, Johnston F, Bowman D and Whitehead P (2005) Healthy country: healthy people? Exploring the health benefits of Indigenous natural resource management. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 29, 117–122.

Burrows ND, Burbidge AA, Fuller PJ and Behn G (2006) Evidence of altered fire regimes in the Western Desert region of Australia. Conservation Science Western Australia 5, 272–284.

Carson DB and Taylor AJ (2008) Sustaining four wheel drive tourism in desert Australia: exploring the evidence from a demand perspective. Rangeland Journal 30, 77–83.

Cooke BD and Fenner F (2002) Rabbit haemorrhagic disease and the biological control of wild rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus, in Australia and New Zealand. Wildlife Research 29, 689–706.

Davies J, White J, Wright A, LaFlamme M and Cunningham T (2008) Applying the sustainable livelihoods approach in Australian desert Aboriginal development. Rangeland Journal 30, 55–65.

Department of Conservation and Land Management (2004) Western Shield Review. Conservation Science Western Australia 5(2), 1–257.

Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (2008) The Indigenous Protected Areas Programme. Australian Government, Canberra. www.environment.gov.au/indigenous/ipa/index.html.

Desert Knowledge CRC (2008) ‘Cross-jurisdictional management of feral camels to protect NRM and cultural values’. Project Newsletter No. 3. Desert Knowledge CRC, Alice Springs. Accessed at www.desertknowledgecrc.com.au/research/feralcamels.html.

Edwards GP, Allan GE, Brock C, Duguid A, Gabrys K and Vaarzon-Morel P (2008) Fire and its management in central Australia. Rangeland Journal 30, 109–121.

Gillen JS, Hamilton R, Low WA and Creagh C (Eds) (2000) Biodiversity and the Re-introduction of Native Fauna at Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park. Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.

Hughes H (2007) Lands of Shame: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ‘Homelands’ in Transition. Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney.

McKenzie NL, Burbidge AA, Baynes A, Brereton RN, Dickman CR, Gordon G, Gibson LA, Menkhorst PW, Robinson AC, Williams MR and Woinarski JCZ (2007) Analysis of factors implicated in the recent decline of Australia’s mammal fauna. Journal of Biogeography 34, 597–611.

McKnight TL (1969) The Camel in Australia. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.

Rea N and Messner J (2008) Constructing Aboriginal NRM livelihoods: Anmatyerr employment in water management. Rangeland Journal 30, 85–93.

Rio Tinto (2008) Indigenous Employment in Australia. Rio Tinto, Melbourne.

Smyth A and James CD (2004) Characteristics of Australia’s rangelands and key design issues for monitoring biodiversity. Austral Ecology 29, 3–15.

Stafford Smith M, Moran M and Seemann K (2008) The ‘viability’ and resilience of communities and settlements in desert Australia. Rangeland Journal 30, 123–135.

Taylor J (2006) Population and diversity: policy implications of emerging Indigenous demographic trends. CAEPR Discussion Paper 283/2006, 1–78. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

RANGELANDS

Mark Stafford Smith

1. Protect and manage water-remote areas, especially in the more densely settled pastoral areas.

2. Create large-scale meta-reserves to protect diffuse evolutionary processes.

3. Ban any further flow controls on arid river systems.

4. Resource a truly national rangelands monitoring scheme, encompassing biodiversity and other land values properly.

5. Establish a regionally integrated system of tourism and conservation management.

6. Resource local (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) stewardship of public natural and cultural heritage values as proper jobs with well-defined goals.

7. Replace all drought-related subsidies and tax provisions for grazing with incentives supporting ecological responses to climate variability.

8. Define a new concept of a rangelands multiple use and have its implications flow through all institutions.

9. Establish formal regional learning systems that develop persistent community local knowledge.

10. Establish an Outback Capital Trust with powers to set and receive natural resource use rents, modelled on the Alaska Permanent Fund.

Introduction

Conventionally, ‘rangelands’ were the outback grazing lands of Australia, over 50% of the continent’s land area between the core deserts and the marginal agricultural lands, overlapping with the tropical savannas in the north and extending to the Great Australian Bight in the south. As people find new values in these lands (Holmes 1997), they have come to incorporate a variety of values beyond grazing; tourism, mining, conservation, Aboriginal, defence and localised horticulture values. The rangeland economy is dominated by mining and, a distant second, tourism, but livestock grazing is still by far the main use by area. Except where these uses are creating pockets of patchy population, their non-Aboriginal population component is declining at the same time as the Aboriginal component is increasing (Brown et al. 2008).

Management of weeds, ferals, fire, carbon stocks and natural values, as well as support for mining and tourism, all mean that occupation of the rangelands is in the national interest. Further, since some people want to live there, including significant numbers of Aborigines, it may be much cheaper to support them to do so and carry out the services required by the nation than to fly in people from outside. In many regions there is a major shift in focus occurring, from grazing to multiple land use and the maintenance of the environmental and cultural heritage on which the majority of the comparative advantages of rangelands rest (Hunt 2003). This shift informs many of the following key issues.

Key issues

1. Protect and manage water-remote areas, especially in the more densely settled pastoral areas

In the grazed rangelands the most precious remaining parts of the landscape for biodiversity are patches which happen to be a long way away from artificial water points, especially when they are in vegetation types preferred by livestock. These are key repositories of flora and fauna that are sensitive to grazing (Landsberg et al. 2003). With increasing numbers of artificial waters, such areas are rapidly disappearing (James et al. 1999). Urgent action is thus needed to protect the remaining water-remote areas from development and to manage the impact of feral animals and weeds. This action should be undertaken in the context of a regional plan (Morton et al. 1995; James et al. 2000) with some form of stewardship approach that engages the landholder in looking after the protected areas where these are embedded in a pastoral enterprise (Biograze 2000).

2. Create large-scale meta-reserves to protect diffuse evolutionary processes

Australia’s rangelands are among the last semi-arid areas in the world where selective forces like rain and fire still operate over large areas in a highly spatially patchy and temporally variable mode in otherwise relatively homogeneous vegetation, driving ‘diffuse evolutionary processes’ (Stafford Smith and Ash 2006). Aside from their intrinsic conservation worth to Australia, being able to observe the continued outcomes of these evolutionary forces may be very significant to understanding evolutionary processes within species. Priority should therefore be given to maintaining the spatial and temporal heterogeneity in these selective forces over sizable regions of similar vegetation (this will be compatible with many other land uses, so the areas might be described as ‘meta-reserves’). This means maintaining the continuity of the vegetation, and allowing the natural diversity of fire regimes to continue. This management goal should be adopted in the key extensive vegetation types, since changing fire regimes and the impacts of grazing are otherwise homogenising some of the selective effects. Appropriate areas of spinifex grasslands and dunefields are probably already accidentally (un)managed to this end, though this explicit goal should be added to their management. However, no such extensive areas of Mitchell grass nor chenopod shrublands are protected and this should be rectified urgently (Mulga woodlands may also require similar action).

3. Ban any further flow controls on arid river systems

The rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin are now recognised as unique. The Basin contains the last uncontrolled arid river system in the world, and the most temporally-variable stream flows in any large catchment globally (McMahon et al. 2008). This variability is known to create and sustain massive resource flushes that support unique populations of biota, including huge water-bird populations (Roshier et al. 2001). There is clear evidence in other basins that the effect of reducing the variability through river extractions and other controls on flow is to rapidly destroy the ability of a river system to support this rich biota (Kingsford et al. 2004). Given the degradation of the Murray-Darling in this regard, arid rivers in general, and those of the Lake Eyre Basin in particular, probably represent the last large-scale support for many of these populations. Since the only formal way to prove this might destroy these river systems, under the precautionary principle no further major flow controls or extractions on any arid rivers should now be permitted. Further, the burden of proof for small uses such as stock waters needs to fall on the user showing that they will not cause harm rather than on society showing that they will.

4. Resource a truly national rangelands monitoring scheme, encompassing biodiversity and other land values properly

‘What you don’t measure you don’t manage.’ There have been major, if tortuous, advances towards national integration of rangelands pastoral monitoring information in the past decade, resulting in the Australian Rangelands Collaborative Information System (ACRIS 2008). The complexity of this achievement has arisen from trying to draw out common threads from State-based systems which were implemented independently, with different levels of sophistication and for different purposes. Despite these advances it is acknowledged that the system is barely adequate in its greatest area of strength – monitoring the drivers and outputs of ecosystem services of importance to pastoral production. It is even weaker in monitoring other ecosystem services such as biodiversity, water resources, and landscape values, and has almost no capacity in relation to measures of social and cultural capital, such as the rapid destruction of linguistic cultural heritage (AIATSIS/FATSIL 2005). The progressive picture of languages and culture dying out is observed as poorly as that of species decline and loss of ecosystem services. At the same time, there is a diminishing will on the part of many State governments to continue with their biophysical monitoring programs, let alone diversify them into other required