What's the overlap

Indigenous people govern and manage just over half of all of Australia’s terrestrial land. Are these Indigenous lands important when it comes to conserving threatened species? Dr Anna Renwick led a team of researchers from CSIRO, Charles Darwin University and University of Queensland to carry out this analysis and found the answer was a resounding yes. Here she explains why.

Indigenous land and threatened species conservation

Indigenous lands are extremely important for biodiversity. Compared to the rest of the country, Indigenous lands are largely unmodified and lightly populated. Consequently, on the whole they are ecologically intact and rich in species.

We compared the distributions of 272 threatened native vertebrate species across Australia with the location of various Indigenous land tenures across Australia (see Figure 1). Indigenous land was found to contain almost an equal proportion per hectare of the ranges of threatened vertebrate species as non-Indigenous land. Almost three quarters of Australian threatened vertebrate species have at least part of their range on Indigenous land.

Key messages

• Almost three quarters of Australian threatened vertebrate species have at least part of their range on Indigenous land
• Indigenous land is essential for the persistence of many threatened vertebrate species

Across Australia’s 89 (terrestrial) bioregions, Indigenous lands in northern, eastern and southern Australia are of highest importance for threatened species.

Indigenous land is essential for the persistence of many threatened vertebrate species as they occur predominantly on Indigenous lands or the opportunities for conservation on other parts of their range are limited by threats and human activity. The overlap is especially high for the priority mammals and birds listed in the national Threatened Species Strategy.

Because there is such a high overlap, this analysis highlights the need for an intercultural approach in the challenge of threatened-species conservation on Indigenous land. Indigenous people need to help guide appropriate goals and strategies to develop threatened-species conservation action plans that accommodate different interests.

 

Figure 1: Numbers of threatened vertebrate species within each 10km2 of Indigenous land across Australia. White areas on the map is land that is not formally recognised as being under Indigenous tenure. See http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0173876