TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantifying current and potential contributions of Australian indigenous peoples to threatened species management
AU - Leiper, Ian
AU - Zander, Kirsten
AU - Robinson, Catherine
AU - Carwadine, Josie
AU - Moggridge, Bradley J.
AU - Garnett, Stephen
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to J. Woinarski and D. Milne who kindly provided mammal distribution data, G. Ehmke who provided BirdLife Australia data, N. dos Remedios and M. Nicholls at the Atlas of Living Australia who helped extract data on other taxa, and state and territory authorities who provided permission to use sensitive data. J. Radford of Bush Heritage Australia, J. Fitzsimons from The Nature Conservancy, J. O’Connor from BirdLife Australia, and J. Kanowski from the Australian Nature Conservancy kindly provided detail on recent projects led by their organizations in which indigenous people have been involved. This research has been supported by the National Environment Science Program Threatened Species Hub.
Funding Information:
We are grateful to J. Woinarski and D. Milne who kindly provided mammal distribution data, G. Ehmke who provided BirdLife Australia data, N. dos Remedios and M. Nicholls at the Atlas of Living Australia who helped extract data on other taxa, and state and territory authorities who provided permission to use sensitive data. J. Radford of Bush Heritage Australia, J. Fitzsimons from The Nature Conservancy, J. O'Connor from BirdLife Australia, and J. Kanowski from the Australian Nature Conservancy kindly provided detail on recent projects led by their organizations in which indigenous people have been involved. This research has been supported by the National Environment Science Program Threatened Species Hub.
Funding Information:
Reporting on all projects funded by the Australian Government Department for the Environment and Energy are aggregated in MERIT. We examined the database, particularly project descriptions and whether projects involved indigenous people. Database information was sometimes augmented with information from project practitioners (approved by the Charles Darwin University Human Research Ethics Committee [H13056]) or the internet.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Society for Conservation Biology
PY - 2018/10
Y1 - 2018/10
N2 - Formal engagement of indigenous peoples in conservation is increasing globally and leads to multiple benefits to communities while contributing to national and international biodiversity goals and obligations. This and ongoing declines in biodiversity have led to calls to increase opportunities for indigenous people to engage in managing their estates. However, there is no overarching understanding of indigenous peoples’ involvement in conservation, which limits the identification of new opportunities. We amalgamated information across governments and large nongovernmental organizations in the megadiverse country of Australia to quantify the involvement of indigenous people in management of threatened species. We identified 153 Australian‐based projects undertaken by different indigenous groups around the nation in 2015 and 2016 that included explicit funds for management of threatened species or threatened ecosystems. Most were in remote parts of western and northern Australia. Almost one‐quarter of all threatened animals and 2% of threatened plants were the subject of some formal conservation action by indigenous people. Occurrence records for 1574 threatened species showed that 823 (89.2%) of 923 species recorded on indigenous peoples’ lands were not listed in management projects. This gap may represent new opportunities for conservation initiatives. Because at least 59.5% of Australia's threatened species occur on indigenous peoples’ lands, efforts to build appropriate and effective indigenous conservation alliances are vital. However, it is also important to recognize that threatened species are part of complex social, ecological, economic and cultural systems, and to achieve successful outcomes requires consideration of indigenous peoples’ priorities, rights, and obligations and relationships with their traditionally owned land and sea.
AB - Formal engagement of indigenous peoples in conservation is increasing globally and leads to multiple benefits to communities while contributing to national and international biodiversity goals and obligations. This and ongoing declines in biodiversity have led to calls to increase opportunities for indigenous people to engage in managing their estates. However, there is no overarching understanding of indigenous peoples’ involvement in conservation, which limits the identification of new opportunities. We amalgamated information across governments and large nongovernmental organizations in the megadiverse country of Australia to quantify the involvement of indigenous people in management of threatened species. We identified 153 Australian‐based projects undertaken by different indigenous groups around the nation in 2015 and 2016 that included explicit funds for management of threatened species or threatened ecosystems. Most were in remote parts of western and northern Australia. Almost one‐quarter of all threatened animals and 2% of threatened plants were the subject of some formal conservation action by indigenous people. Occurrence records for 1574 threatened species showed that 823 (89.2%) of 923 species recorded on indigenous peoples’ lands were not listed in management projects. This gap may represent new opportunities for conservation initiatives. Because at least 59.5% of Australia's threatened species occur on indigenous peoples’ lands, efforts to build appropriate and effective indigenous conservation alliances are vital. However, it is also important to recognize that threatened species are part of complex social, ecological, economic and cultural systems, and to achieve successful outcomes requires consideration of indigenous peoples’ priorities, rights, and obligations and relationships with their traditionally owned land and sea.
KW - asociaciones indígenas de conservación
KW - bioregiones
KW - bioregions
KW - conservation opportunities
KW - cultural species
KW - derechos indígenas
KW - especies culturales
KW - indigenous conservation partnerships
KW - indigenous rights
KW - land and sea management
KW - manejo de tierra y mar
KW - oportunidades de conservación
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85050625441&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/700d091e-719d-3de2-9f37-6bca438c54aa/
U2 - 10.1111/cobi.13178
DO - 10.1111/cobi.13178
M3 - Article
SN - 0888-8892
VL - 32
SP - 1038
EP - 1047
JO - Conservation Biology
JF - Conservation Biology
IS - 5
ER -