Indigenous knowledge is key to saving the great desert skink and other species

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

When Christine Ellis was young, she would watch her mother cooking with an open fire in the Tanami Desert.
One meal she remembers being prepared was warrarna, the Warlpiri name for a great desert skink (Liopholis kintorei).
Measuring up to 44 centimetres long, these desert lizards can be coloured like a sunset, with bright orange back scales that transition to a yellow belly.
Ms Ellis's mother would cook the lizards on the coals and peel the charred skin from their back and belly.
"We'd just wait patiently to when it was cooked and then mum would cut it in half," Ms Ellis said.
"The tail was nice, it was like fish.
"It was nice, but now we look after them [warrarna]."
The warrarna was added to Australia's national threatened species list in 2000 after cats, foxes and a lack of fire management in some parts of its range contributed to a population decline.
The decline in lizard numbers is impacting the cultural wellbeing of desert communities where the warrarna is recognised in art, stories and song.
That's because of its status as a significant entity in "tjukurrpa" (which refers to both a historical creation period for the world by ancestral beings and a current living force).
But there are hopes the lizard could one day be brought back to a point that is strong both in population and cultural health.
Such an outcome may even see it sustainably eaten again.
And now the knowledge of Ms Ellis, a Warlpiri ranger and expert tracker, and other traditional owners is at the forefront of preventing the lizard's extinction.
Two years ago, traditional owners from Australia's central deserts worked with scientists and the federal government to create the first national Indigenous-led species recovery plan.
Recovery plans are a set of management actions and plans to stop the decline or improve the numbers of flora and fauna on Australia's threatened species list.
Having a set 10-year recovery plan enables funding to Indigenous ranger groups to utilise "two-way science" — a mixture of Western science with traditional knowledge and land management techniques.
"We've been teaching other rangers how to track [warrarna]," Ms Ellis said.
Warrarna live in burrows in the desert sands in family groups of four or more, she added.
She has shown other rangers how to spot the burrows, which are close to communal latrines used by the skinks on the surface.
Indigenous Desert Alliance ecologist Rachel Paltridge, who helped assemble the recovery plan, said it had become competitive between ranger groups to find the most burrows.
"We've got a trophy now and awards for who gets the most burrows and who does the best work with the schools," she said.
Sharing tracking skills across ranger groups has also helped them to find the best places to put traps for feral foxes and cats that hunt the lizards.
"We've got some great projects going on with ranger groups using the latest technology in cat control," Dr Paltridge said.
"One group that has got hardly any great desert skinks left … they're using grooming traps around the burrows and knocking off foxes and cats pretty regularly."
There has also been more funding for fire management. Research earlier this year showed mosaic burning patterns, long used for land management by Aboriginal desert groups, was beneficial to lizards compared to uncontrolled wild fires.
Tjakura in Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra languages
Warrarna in Warlpiri language
Tjalapa in Pintupi language
Mulyamiji in Manyjilijarra language by Martu people
Nampu in Manyjilijarra language by Ngalia people
Aran by Anmatjere people
Arabana woman and conservation scientist Teagan Shields, who was not involved in the lizard's management, said the recovery plan had been a significant development in Indigenous-led conservation.
Dr Shields, who investigates how to empower Indigenous land and sea managers in biodiversity conservation, said one of the key achievements of the plan was how it incorporated traditional knowledge.
"One of the really interesting things when you look at the plan is they talk about the active use of that species as being a key success of that plan," she said.
"The other thing it really did was open the pathway for other Indigenous-led plans."
The federal government is currently considering another Indigenous-led recovery plan for the golden-shouldered parrot, known by the Olkola people as "alwal", in Far North Queensland.
Dr Shields, who works out of Curtin University, said the draft plan for the parrot went further than a single animal in terms of its cultural relationship with the broader ecosystem.
"The thing that it has, which probably hasn't been seen before, is that interaction of these culturally significant species within the system," she said.
The plan details how removal of dingoes, known as ootalkarra by the Olkola and revered as their "boss", can be detrimental to the parrot.
That's because the presence of the dingo is believed to protect nests from predators of the bird.
"What we're starting to see in these plans is the marrying of species … [and] talks about that whole systems approach," Dr Shields said.
There is momentum building behind integrating traditional knowledge from around Australia into conservation planning by governments.
In June, the South Australian government passed new biodiversity legislation that included the concept of "culturally significant entities".
These entities can be a particular plant or animal species with strong cultural significance to traditional owners or even a place or ecosystem.
The legislation enables a First Nations committee to be established and requires a new policy to be developed for identifying and managing entities.
Lisien Loan, the director of conservation and wildlife from the state's parks service, told the ABC such recognition would not block development but instead inform departmental planning.
"So things like a [state-level] threatened species recovery plan would need to consider whether that species is a significant cultural biodiversity entity, and involve First Nations in that development of the plan and recovery actions."
South Australia was the first state or territory to recognise culturally significant entities in its law, but a project co-led by Dr Shields could lead to national change.
The project aims to come up with a nationally accepted definition of the concept, in consultation with First Nations people from around the country, that could be adopted federally.
Dr Shields said the idea wasn't new, and drew on generations of knowledge.
"It just so happens that at the moment we're getting some traction in this space, which is really positive," she said.
The definition, to be made public soon, would also encompass species that may not be considered threatened at a state or national level.
Dr Paltridge said in the communities she worked with that the Australian bustard and emu were two species were considered culturally important but were not listed as threatened despite anecdotal decline in desert areas.
"They [ranger groups] would like to have more research on how we can increase them and look after them better," she said.
"We don't want to wait until they're so threatened that it's difficult to recover them."