tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/outback-15430/articlesOutback – The Conversation2021-08-23T05:03:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1645522021-08-23T05:03:33Z2021-08-23T05:03:33ZAboriginal art on a car? How an Indigenous artist and an adventurer met in the 1930 wet season in Kakadu<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413013/original/file-20210726-15-1nfbpkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3492%2C2111&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Adventurer Francis Birtles in his car with a man identified as Indigenous artist Nayombolmi.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-149653944/view">National Library of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.</em></p>
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<p>Histories of Indigenous Australia are filled with stories of cross-cultural encounters. Many of these were harsh and brutal, leaving inter-generational wounds that are still healing. Other encounters can be framed around mutual curiosity.</p>
<p>Our recent research just published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2021.1956336">History Australia</a> has illuminated one such story, a fascinating encounter between two Australian icons: adventurer <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/birtles-francis-edwin-5244">Francis Birtles</a> and prolific Aboriginal artist <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00293652.2020.1779802">Nayombolmi</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414704/original/file-20210805-23-10wpgzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Francis Birtles in Arnhem Land, late 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the National Library of Australia</span></span>
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<h2>An early celebrity</h2>
<p>Born in 1881, Birtles has been described as one of Australia’s first homegrown superstars. </p>
<p>In the early 1900s, he crossed the continent, first on bicycle and later by car. He presented his adventures in books featuring his own photographs and made movies, which were screened in major Australian towns. </p>
<p>A rugged explorer, he presented white Australians with a new understanding of the outback. Biographer <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/warren-brown/francis-birtles-australian-adventurer">Warren Brown</a> writes: “This young, fit, bronzed adventurer seemed to embody the excitement and optimism of a new country flourishing in a new century.”</p>
<p>Birtles’ <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4670629.Francis_Birtles">books</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083797/">movies</a> include many stories about encounters with Indigenous Australians. In the beginning he made use of a <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p21521/pdf/ch055.pdf">colonial trope</a> that pictured them as “primitive savages”. Some of his works gave audiences the impression Birtles was escaping danger. Our new research presents another picture.</p>
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<span class="caption">Nayombolmi in 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph by Lance Bennett. Copyright: Estate of Lance Bennett, courtesy of Barbara Spencer.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>A skilled artist</h2>
<p>While Birtles is well known, few people know about Nayombolmi. In fact, the identification of him as the Aboriginal person posing on Birtles’ car in the discussed photography, has never been formally acknowledged until now. </p>
<p>Nayombolmi was born in today’s Kakadu National Park. He had a traditional upbringing and is remembered as a fully initiated man of “High Degree”. First and foremost though, Nayombolmi is known as a skilled artist. </p>
<p>One of his <a href="http://collectionsearch.nma.gov.au/set/2707">bark paintings</a> was included in the National Museum of Australia’s Old Masters exhibition in 2013.</p>
<p>He also created some of Australia’s most famous rock art, such as the <a href="https://parksaustralia.gov.au/kakadu/do/walks/nourlangie-rock-walk/">Anbangbang shelter</a> in the Burrungkuy (Nourlangie) area in Kakadu. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="rock art" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414707/original/file-20210805-13-2xfmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Angbangbang shelter with some of Nayombolmi’s many artworks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrea Jalandoni</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-dads-painting-is-hiding-in-secret-place-how-aboriginal-rock-art-can-live-on-even-when-gone-157315">'Our dad's painting is hiding, in secret place': how Aboriginal rock art can live on even when gone</a>
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<h2>A very long drive</h2>
<p>The two men met during the wet season of 1929–1930 in today’s Kakadu. </p>
<p>Birtles had just returned from an adventure that made him the first person to drive a car from London to Melbourne — his famous <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2201643850163522">“Sundowner”</a> Bean Car, now on display at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.</p>
<p>After a well-earned rest, he took off for Arnhem Land together with his dog Yowie in a brand new Bean car. Having lost his savings in the 1929 Wall Street stock market crash, he went bush to try to find gold. As explained in his 1935 memoirs:</p>
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<p>One day in an undulating ridge I found that which I had spent months seeking — gold. […] I worked there during the whole of the wet season, from October to April. From a party of blacks, travelling through that part of the country, I obtained some tea, [giving] them some tobacco in exchange. It was a lonely camp. […] The little tribe, passing through on a pilgrimage from one hunting-ground to another, were the only human beings I saw during the months I was there.</p>
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<p>Our new research about known rock art artists in Kakadu has shown that the “pilgrims” included Nayombolmi and his closest kin. From Birtles’ photographs the encounter appears to have been a relaxed one.</p>
<p>One photograph shows Birtles having tea with Yowie. Aboriginal spears are placed on the side of Birtles’ car and a dead wallaby on its bonnet. On the rear of the car are unmistakable Aboriginal paintings that seem to have been there for some time. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Birtles has tea with his dog Yowie. Traditional Aboriginal spears hang on his car and a dead wallaby is draped over the bonnet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library Australia</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Another photograph shows the owner of the spears. An Aboriginal man with scarification across his chest holding a recent kill — a bush turkey. He has a pipe in his mouth. </p>
<p>In the background, another Aboriginal man we believe to be Nayombolmi sits on the rear of the car. The photographs seem to confirm Birtles’ account of the exchange of tea and tobacco.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="black and white photo of figures in outback" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414720/original/file-20210805-15-1bpzep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Birtles’ car with the spears, Yowie and two of the ‘pilgrims;’ the one to the right we believe is Nayombolmi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Francis Birtles/National Library Australia</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Car as canvas</h2>
<p>The most fascinating photograph (the lead image above) shows <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03122417.2018.1543095">Birtles’ car</a> decorated with 19 traditional Aboriginal rock art images depicting an emu, a fresh water crocodile, two long-necked turtles, a saratoga (fish), a hand-and-arm stencil and 14 dancing and crawling human-like figures. </p>
<p>On the rear end of the car, Nayombolmi sits on a dead kangaroo holding a dog in his lap. Birtles sits in the driver’s seat holding a live magpie goose. </p>
<p>The identification of Nayombolmi — sometimes described as the most prolific known rock art artist in the world — was recorded by Dan Gillespie in the early 1980s during oral history with Nayombolmi’s kin brother, George Namingum. </p>
<p>Shown the photograph of the painted car, Namingum identified Nayombolmi as the artist. He declared: “Oh yeah. That’s my brother” and added that Nayombolmi “used to painting everything”. </p>
<p>The identification has since been confirmed by Nayombolmi’s closest kin, who knew him when they were young. </p>
<p>After the unexpected encounters between Nayombolmi and Birtles, a gold mine known as Arnhem Land Gold Development Company – No Liability was established through Birtles’ agency. Nayombolmi, his family and other local Aboriginal people worked at the mine — though were paid with food, tobacco and alcohol rather than cash. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/introducing-the-maliwawa-figures-a-previously-undescribed-rock-art-style-found-in-western-arnhem-land-145535">Introducing the Maliwawa Figures: a previously undescribed rock art style found in Western Arnhem Land</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Birtles quickly sold his mine shares and became rich, allowing him to possess things he “always wanted”; as he wrote later: “The sort of things a man of my tastes dreams of owning when he hasn’t a cracker”. </p>
<p>Nayombolmi and his kin — despite the friendly encounter captured on film, decorating Birtle’s car, and the fact they were instrumental to the mining operations — were left with nothing.</p>
<p>We do not know what happened to the car that Nayombolmi painted. The photographs are all that remain. </p>
<p><em>Our research has been undertaken in close collaboration with Djok Senior Traditional Owner Jeffrey Lee and Parks Australia (Kakadu).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164552/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joakim Goldhahn received founding from the Australian Research Council and Rock Art Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul S.C.Taçon receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally K. May receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>One was a celebrity adventurer, the other was a skilled Indigenous artist who painted everything in sight. A new look at old photographs confirms their meeting.Joakim Goldhahn, Rock Art Australia Ian Potter Kimberley Chair, The University of Western AustraliaPaul S.C.Taçon, Chair in Rock Art Research and Director of the Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit (PERAHU), Griffith UniversitySally K. May, Senior Research Fellow, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/816062017-07-27T06:46:35Z2017-07-27T06:46:35ZA new look at a lost dinosaur dig in the Australian outback<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179935/original/file-20170727-28585-1gjbs9h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dr Tim Holland (seated right) assisting volunteers in the excavation of the ribs of _Austrosaurus mckillopi_ in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Poropat</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fossil bones discovered almost 80 years apart in a remote area of Queensland are helping to reveal the shape of a dinosaur that roamed Earth more than 100 million years ago. </p>
<p>We still have only a few fragments — mostly vertebrae and a few ribs — but we now know that <em>Austrosaurus mckillopi</em> was a sauropod, a plant-eating dinosaur with a long neck that walked on four legs. </p>
<p>Sauropods are fairly commonly found in outback Queensland, but the majority of them lived between five million and ten million years after <em>Austrosaurus</em>. This means that <em>Austrosaurus</em> could potentially be their close relative, or even their direct ancestor.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the bones of <em>Austrosaurus</em> are too incomplete and poorly preserved for us to be able to determine this. But we can tell that <em>Austrosaurus</em> was at least distantly related to other Queensland sauropods, such as <a href="http://www.australianageofdinosaurs.com/page/47/australian-age-of-dinosaurs-%7C-diamantinasaurus-matildae"><em>Diamantinasaurus</em></a> and <a href="http://www.australianageofdinosaurs.com/page/53/australian-age-of-dinosaurs-%7C-savannasaurus-elliottorum"><em>Savannasaurus</em></a>, since it shares some features with them.</p>
<p>Details of the new research on <em>Austrosaurus</em> <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03115518.2017.1334826">were published today in Alcheringa, an Australasian Journal of Palaeontology</a>, and the story of how the fossil bones were discovered is as fascinating as the discovery itself.</p>
<h2>The original find</h2>
<p>Many amazing fossil discoveries in outback Queensland have been made by people who make their living off the land. As an example, the recently discovered specimen nicknamed “Judy”, <a href="http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2017/07/significant-dinosaur-find-in-outback-queensland.php">which appears to be the most complete sauropod dinosaur ever found in Australia</a>, was discovered by Winton grazier Bob Elliott while he was mustering sheep.</p>
<p>Back in 1932 it was Henry Burgoyne Wade, overseer of the Clutha sheep station northwest of Richmond, who spotted some unusual rocks in one of the paddocks. </p>
<p>Realising they were fossils, he showed them to station manager Harley John McKillop, who contacted his Brisbane-based brother, Dr Martin Joseph McKillop.</p>
<p>Dr McKillop travelled more than 1,700km to Clutha to help collect more bones and then sent a sketch of one to Heber Longman, director of the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. Longman instantly recognised the significance of the find and asked for the fossils to be sent to him.</p>
<p>The Clutha fossils arrived in Brisbane in January 1933 and within two months Longman realised they were backbones from a long-necked sauropod dinosaur. He named the new dinosaur <a href="http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/214374#page/3/mode/1up"><em>Austrosaurus mckillopi</em></a> (“Dr McKillop’s southern reptile”) and estimated its length as 15 metres.</p>
<p><em>Austrosaurus</em> would have been a land-living animal but Longman realised that its bones had been buried at the bottom of the Eromanga Sea. This inland sea covered much of western Queensland 102 million years ago. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179920/original/file-20170727-29425-1ops77l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Because it was buried at the bottom of an inland sea, it is possible that the carcass of <em>Austrosaurus mckillopi</em> was scavenged as it sank by sharks and marine reptiles like the huge pliosaur <em>Kronosaurus</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artwork by Travis R Tischler</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A lost dig site</h2>
<p>After 1933, relatively little attention was paid to <em>Austrosaurus</em>. In the 1970s, palaeontologists tried to relocate the site from which the bones were exhumed, but these attempts failed. Consequently, the site was considered lost.</p>
<p>In 2011, I started work as a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden. The focus of my research was Australia’s Cretaceous sauropods, and <em>Austrosaurus</em> intrigued me. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179934/original/file-20170727-819-4lw44l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The original <em>Austrosaurus mckillopi</em> backbones viewed from the left side.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Poropat</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most of the preserved bones were vertebrae from the chest region, but some fragments looked like bits of rib. One thing was particularly curious: on several fossil blocks, the back half of one vertebra was positioned immediately before the front half of another vertebra, with very little rock in between.</p>
<p>The bones of <em>Austrosaurus</em> must have been preserved in sequence, close to life position, which suggested that more of <em>Austrosaurus</em> was waiting to be found.</p>
<p>In 2014 I contacted Dr Tim Holland, then curator at <a href="http://www.kronosauruskorner.com.au/">Kronosaurus Korner</a> museum in Richmond, about relocating the site. I had worked out the approximate location of the site by overlaying Longman’s 1933 map — complete with an “X” to mark the spot — on Google Earth. </p>
<p>Thanks to David and Judy Elliott, cofounders of the <a href="http://www.australianageofdinosaurs.com/">Australian Age of Dinosaurs</a> museum in Winton, I also knew that Wade and the McKillops had erected a sign, supported by two wooden posts, at the <em>Austrosaurus</em> site in 1933.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179918/original/file-20170727-7204-khwq5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photograph of the sign which once marked the <em>Austrosaurus mckillopi</em> dig site.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Richard Wade</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To relocate the <em>Austrosaurus</em> site, Tim enlisted the help of Richmond mayor John Wharton, who had grown up on Clutha and knew about the wooden posts. By 2014 both posts had fallen over and a ground-based search for them among the dried Mitchell grass was unsuccessful.</p>
<p>Unperturbed, John jumped in his helicopter and soon spotted the posts from the air. Once he landed, he saw some rocks nearby and they contained fragments of sauropod bone. John had rediscovered the <em>Austrosaurus</em> site!</p>
<h2>Back to the dig site</h2>
<p>Shortly after I received the good news from him, Tim started planning a trip to the site. We visited twice in 2014 and although we found plenty of bone fragments we struggled to get through the clay-rich topsoil.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179930/original/file-20170727-29425-1qp2ypk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A backhoe helps at the <em>Austrosaurus mckillopi</em> dig.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Poropat</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2015, Tim organised another dig, and Richmond Shire Council loaned their backhoe to remove the soil. Together with a team of dedicated volunteers, we recovered six deeply buried ribs, surrounded by fossilised marine bivalves (relatives of modern day clams and mussels).</p>
<p>The spacing between the ribs showed that they were close to life position, just like the vertebrae. We were delighted that more than 80 years after the initial discovery of <em>Austrosaurus</em> we had found more of the same individual.</p>
<p>From 2014 to 2016, for a few days each year, I studied the original bones of <em>Austrosaurus</em> in Brisbane with Jay Nair, a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland. </p>
<p>Together, we worked out the sequence of <em>Austrosaurus</em>’ vertebrae. When we scaled photos of the complete series with photos of the ribs found in 2014–15, we confirmed that they belonged to the same animal.</p>
<p>In 2016, another PhD candidate at The University of Queensland, Caitlin Syme, tried to work out how <em>Austrosaurus</em>‘ carcass came to rest at the bottom of the Eromanga Sea. </p>
<p>She concluded that for a portion of the carcass to have remained intact, some of the soft tissue must still have been in place when it sank. This suggests that at least this portion of the carcass was not “picked clean” by scavengers before it sank. Why that is, we might never know.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179931/original/file-20170727-22940-lnkyc4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The reconstructed <em>Austrosaurus mckillopi</em> site. The backbones (top) were excavated in the 1930s, and the ribs (projecting down) were dug up in 2014 and 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Poropat</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Much still to learn about <em>Austrosaurus</em></h2>
<p>Even though my colleagues and I have enhanced the original and only known specimen of <em>Austrosaurus</em>, we still don’t know that much about its anatomy or appearance. </p>
<p>We can tell that <em>Austrosaurus</em> is a type of sauropod called a somphospondylan titanosauriform — this means that it sits on a branch between brachiosaurs like <em>Giraffatitan</em>, and titanosaurs like <em>Savannasaurus</em> and <em>Diamantinasaurus</em>, on the sauropod family tree. </p>
<p>Placing it more precisely than that, however, is tough. On the plus side, we have been able to identify features of <em>Austrosaurus</em> that distinguish it from all other sauropods.</p>
<p>One of the best ways to advance palaeontological understanding is to find new fossils. Another is to rigorously reassess old specimens. By conducting the <em>Austrosaurus</em> project, my colleagues and I did both.</p>
<p>Although we ended up with a less-than-amazing specimen and an incomplete story, we hope it will inspire other people to revisit old sites while continuing the search for new ones. It is tantalising to wonder what else might be waiting to be found in outback Queensland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Poropat is affiliated with the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum of Natural History Museum in Winton, Queensland. </span></em></p>The location of a dinosaur find on a remote Queensland sheep station was lost for almost 80 years. But the site was rediscovered, and details are now emerging about the make up of the new dinosaur.Stephen Poropat, Postdoctoral Researcher (Palaeontology), Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/779442017-06-19T20:02:00Z2017-06-19T20:02:00ZWe need our country; our country needs us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174348/original/file-20170619-28805-1olfx55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The sun rises above Uluru in outback Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Gray/Reuters </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Increasingly, our leaders talk of Australian values and presume that these arose organically, as though through some moral forge. An alternative view is that our national character and sense of identity have been shaped mostly by the land itself: we are a nation of individualistic, resilient and resourceful individuals because our land is isolated, expansive, capricious and unique. </p>
<p>Our country’s dust, drought, flood, blood and harsh beauty have made us what we are.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2017/06/my-country-our-outback-voices-from-australias-remote-heartland">report published today</a>, the Pew Charitable Trust compiled a series of perspectives on how people living in remote and rural Australia see their lives and country. We interviewed about 12 groups over the course of a year, trying to understand the intricate relationships between our people and our nature.</p>
<p>The core questions addressed in these accounts are simple. How do we see our land? How do we live in it? How do we care for it? How are we shaped by it? What do we value in it, or seek from it? And to what extent does the land now need us?</p>
<p>The responses were intriguing. For many Indigenous Australians, country is a defining feature, a place of belonging, imbued over countless generations with meaning and spiritual significance. For many other Australians living in remote regions, country still provides an embracing sense of place, a setting in which life can be meaningful. </p>
<p>“This place is where I feel safe and inspired and needed,” conservation manager Luke Bayley said of Charles Darwin Reserve. “I love the landscape – the big sky, the weathered rocks and the harshness; the beauty when it all comes together […] I also find it an endless journey.”</p>
<p>Although they may want different things from the land, miners, pastoralists, Aboriginal landowners, wildlife rangers and tourism operators all share some pivotal values, concerns and language. </p>
<p>All seek to treasure and maintain its productivity and health; all recognise the new threats that may be subverting it; all feel a sense of belonging and a responsibility to it; all appreciate the need to know how it works in order to draw benefit and sustenance from it; all see beauty and wonder in at least some of its constituent elements; all recognise the challenge of managing vast lands with few people; and, to some degree, all understand a mutual dependency between land and people.</p>
<p>This common ground provides a robust foundation for the collaboration and regional - or national - scale planning needed for the management of Outback Australia, with its unique challenges of complex environmental linkages across vast distances, pervasive threats and few management resources.</p>
<p>But the nuanced differences in perspectives are also important. Many living in Outback Australia identify strongly with other groups living on the land. But there is much scope – so far little developed – in remote Australia for increased recognition of the perspectives and expertise of others. </p>
<p>Most notably, there is extraordinary opportunity to bring together the intimate knowledge of country and its care held by Indigenous Australians with the often complementary strengths of land management based on western science. We can create distinctively Australian environmental management, based on intimate knowledge of country and the capacity to respond to its new threats.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174332/original/file-20170619-28794-adn4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A previous Pew study mapped the ‘Outback’ based on factors like low population density and infertile soil, and found it covered 73% of Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/projects/outback-to-oceans-australia">Pew Charitable Trust, The Modern Outback (2014)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, there are also some notable inconsistencies among the perspectives we investigated, indicative of unresolved issues that need attention and a better process for conciliation or mutual understanding. For example, the values attributed to <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2011.00203.x/full">dingoes and wild dogs</a>, and hence their <a href="http://www.pestsmart.org.au/national-wild-dog-action-plan/">management</a>, remain <a href="http://www.actazool.org/temp/%7B92CEDBE7-1613-4572-AD35-EDB92BF4916D%7D.pdf">highly polarised</a> among people living in remote Australia. The elements of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1442-9993.2000.01036.x/full">water</a> and fire are pivotal in the Outback, and their use is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14486563.2005.10648644;">often also contested</a>.</p>
<p>Furthermore, just as our society has been moulded by our country, increasingly we are re-shaping the country, deliberately or inadvertently, expertly or ineptly. Across most of the world, biodiversity is in decline particularly in areas with high human population density and extensive habitat destruction. </p>
<p>The Australian outback is one of the world’s few remaining <a href="http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/wildareas-v2-human-footprint-geographic">large natural areas</a>, along with places like the Amazon Basin and the Sahara. Such areas are most likely to long support <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-australias-outback-is-globally-important-32938">functional and healthy ecological processes and biodiversity</a>. </p>
<p>However, somewhat counterintuitively, in much of the Outback, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/15/4531.short">nature is in decline</a> even in its most remote and sparsely populated regions. This decline reflects the loss from many areas of a long-established, intricate and purposeful Indigenous land management, that has <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2699.2001.00555.x/full">long moulded its nature</a>. Now, fire is often <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/bt/BT00087">managed inexpertly or not at all</a>, leading to <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10287.short">uncontrolled and destructive wildfire</a>. And the decline of biodiversity and loss of productivity in remote Australia is due also to the extensive spread of <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320716309223">many pests and weeds</a> introduced over the last century or so, and the inadequate resources committed to their control. </p>
<p>Inexorably, we will lose much that is special in our nature unless we can collectively address these causal factors and manage our lands more effectively. The land managers we talked to are skilled and willing, but they need more support. </p>
<p>One example is Les Schultz, a Ngadju elder from the country around Norseman in south-western Australia. He told us he wants to see the Great Western Woodlands managed properly, saying, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will always be around, and it ticks all the boxes of everything good in terms of outcomes for Ngadju people and the general community …. We need Ngadju rangers with boots on the ground.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A similar call comes from some pastoralists, such as Michael Clinch from the Murchison region of WA. He inherited a land long over-exploited by unsustainable levels of grazing, and is now seeking new management approaches to to take his land on “a journey of redemption”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Outback, to me, is the cathedral of Australia. We’re desperate to reclaim the quality and value of the Outback, and to achieve that vision we need support … We’re not asking for a handout, but by jeez we’re asking for a hand up. We need assistance to rebuild and restructure our grazing. If we don’t do it, who the hell will?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The accounts showcase people at home in their country. Such accounts, of characters living in the bush, have long been emblematic for our nation. But these lives represent a diminishing minority of Australians. </p>
<p>In our increasingly urbanised society, for much of our nation’s population, the bush remains quixotic and unfamiliar, to be experienced superficially or fearfully. One objective of this collation is to allow urban Australians to see and feel the country through the eyes and hearts of those who are immersed in it. </p>
<p>We would like all Australians to more appreciate the care bestowed on our land by those who cherish it, the benefits we all derive from that care, and the need to better support those who seek to maintain our natural legacy.</p>
<p>We cannot live well in this land unless we understand it, and value it.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on <a href="insert%20link">Outback Voices</a>, a report compiled by the <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en">Pew Charitable Trusts</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77944/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Woinarski worked with Pew Charitable Trusts to contribute to a series on Outback Australia. He is currently a deputy director of the Threatened Species Recovery Hub, funded by the Australian government's National Environmental Science Programme. </span></em></p>‘Australian values’ have been mangled into meaninglessness by countless politicians. But there is an national character, shaped by the Australian land. New research investigates Outback values.John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/721852017-02-08T18:57:40Z2017-02-08T18:57:40ZA wolf in dogs’ clothing? Why dingoes may not be Australian wildlife’s saviours<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155770/original/image-20170206-27210-183a5hq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dingoes are often promoted as a solution to Australia's species conservation problems.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dingo image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dingoes have often been <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-american-wolves-can-teach-us-about-australian-dingoes-27815">hailed as a solution</a> to Australia’s threatened species crisis, particularly the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-should-enlist-dingoes-to-control-invasive-species-24807">extreme extinction rate</a> of the country’s small mammals. </p>
<p>But are dingoes really the heroes-in-waiting of Australian conservation? The truth is that no one knows, although our <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352249616300143">recent research</a> casts a shadow over some foundations of this idea. </p>
<p>The notion of dingoes as protectors of Australian ecosystems was inspired largely by the <a href="http://www.yellowstonepark.com/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/">apparently successful reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park</a> in the United States. But Australia’s environments are very different. </p>
<h2>Cascading species</h2>
<p>To understand the recent excitement about wolves, we need to consider an ecological phenomenon known as “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3450972.pdf">trophic cascades</a>”. The term “trophic” essentially refers to food, and thus trophic interactions involve the transfer of energy between organisms when one eats another.</p>
<p>Within ecosystems, there are different trophic levels. Plants are typically near the base; herbivores (animals that eat plants) are nearer the middle; and predators (animals that eat other animals) are at the top. </p>
<p>The theory of trophic cascades describes what happens when something disrupts populations of top-order predators, such as lions in Africa, tigers in Asia, or Yellowstone’s wolves. </p>
<p>The wolves’ decline allowed herbivores, such as elk, to increase. In turn, the growing elk population ate too much of the shrubby vegetation alongside rivers, which, over time, changed from being mostly willow thickets to grassland. Then another herbivore – beavers – that relies on willows went locally extinct. This in turn affected the ecology of the local streams. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155772/original/image-20170206-27210-hl84ot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wolves play a key role in Yellowstone’s ecosystems.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wolf image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Without beavers to engineer dams, local waterways changed from a series of connected pools to eroded gutters, with huge flow-on effects for smaller aquatic animals and plants. </p>
<p>Now, the reintroduction of wolves appears to have reduced the impact of elk on vegetation, some riparian areas have regenerated, some birds have returned and there are signs of beavers coming back. That said, <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1756/20122977">wolf reintroduction</a> has not yet fully reversed the trophic cascade.</p>
<h2>Comparing apples with quandongs</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/lets-move-the-worlds-longest-fence-to-settle-the-dingo-debate-37155">Sturt National Park</a>, in the New South Wales outback, has been nominated as an experimental site for reintroducing dingoes. Recently, we compared the environment of Sturt with Yellowstone to consider how such a reintroduction might play out. </p>
<p>These regions are clearly very different. Both are arid, but that is where the similarity ends. Yellowstone has a stable climate and nutrient-rich soils, sits at high altitude and features diverse landscapes. Precipitation in Yellowstone hasn’t dropped below 200mm per year in more than a century.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155768/original/image-20170206-27204-m3v9ey.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Herds of bison in Yellowstone National Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Helen Morgan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yellowstone’s precipitation falls largely as heavy winter snow. Each spring the snowmelt flows in huge volumes into rivers, streams and wetlands across the landscape. This underpins a predictable supply of resources which, in turn, triggers herbivores to migrate and reproduce every year.</p>
<p>These predictable conditions support a wide range of carnivores and herbivores, including some of North America’s last-remaining “megafauna”, such as bison, which can tip the scales at over a tonne. Yellowstone also has many large predators – wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, mountain lion, lynx and coyotes all coexist there – along with a range of smaller predators too.</p>
<p>Predators in Yellowstone can be sure that prey will be available at particular times. The environment promotes stable, strong trophic links, allowing individual animals to reach large sizes. This strong relationship between trophic levels means that when the system is perturbed – for instance, when wolves are removed – trophic cascades can occur. </p>
<p>Unlike Yellowstone, arid Australia is dry, flat, nutrient-poor and characterised by one of the most extreme and unpredictable climates on Earth. The yearly rainfall at Sturt reaches 200mm just 50% of the time. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155769/original/image-20170206-27202-20ywfn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s Sturt Desert has a highly unpredictable climate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Helen Morgan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australia’s arid ecosystems have evolved largely in isolation for 45 million years. In response to drought, fire and poor soils, arid Australia has evolved highly specialised ecosystems, made up of species that can survive well-documented <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10531-005-0601-2">“boom and bust” cycles</a>. </p>
<p>Unlike the regular rhythm of Yellowstone life, sporadic pulses of water and fire affect and override the trophic interactions of species, between plants and herbivores, and predators and their prey. Our native herbivores travel in response to patchy and unpredictable food sources in boom times. But however good the boom, the bust is certain to follow.</p>
<p>Unpredictable but inevitable drought weakens trophic links between predators, herbivores and plants. Individuals die due to lack of water, populations are reduced and can only recover when rain comes again. </p>
<p>Our arid wildlife is very different from Yellowstone’s too. Our megafauna are long gone. So too are our medium-sized predators, such as thylacines. </p>
<p>Today, arid Australia’s remaining native wildlife is characterised by birds, reptiles and small mammals, along with macropods that are generally much smaller than the herbivores in Yellowstone. </p>
<p>Our predators are small and mostly introduced species, including dingoes, foxes and cats. None is equivalent to wolves, mountain lions or bears, which can reach more than three times the weight of the largest dingo. Wolves are wolves, and dingoes are dogs.</p>
<h2>Wolves in dingo clothes?</h2>
<p>What does all this mean for Australia? Yellowstone’s stable climate means that there are strong and reliable links between predators, prey and plants. By comparison, arid Australia’s climate is dramatically unstable. </p>
<p>This raises the question of whether we can reasonably expect to see the same sorts of relationships between species, and whether dingoes are likely to help restore Australia’s ecosystems. </p>
<p>We should conduct experiments to understand the roles of dingoes and the impacts of managing them. How we manage predators, including dingoes, should be informed by robust knowledge of local ecosystems, including predators’ roles within them.</p>
<p>What we shouldn’t do is expect that dingoes will necessarily help Australia’s wildlife, based on what wolves have done in snowy America. The underlying ecosystems are very different. </p>
<p>Many people are inspired by the apparently successful example of wolves returning to Yellowstone, but in Australia we should tread carefully. </p>
<p>Rather than trying to prove that dingoes in Australia are just as beneficial as wolves in Yellowstone, we should seek to understand the roles that dingoes really play here, and work from there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Morgan receives funding from the Keith and Dorothy Mackay Travelling Scholarship, University of New England, the Holsworth Wildlife Endowment Trust and Invasive Animals CRC</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guy Ballard receives funding from the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre, NSW Local Land Services and the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Thomas Hunter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The notion of using dingoes to protect Australia’s wildlife is based on wolves in the US, but research cast doubts on the link.Helen Morgan, Phd candidate, Ecology, University of New EnglandGuy Ballard, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of New EnglandJohn Thomas Hunter, Adjunct Associate Professor in Landscape Ecology, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/704012017-02-06T19:15:08Z2017-02-06T19:15:08ZThe environment needs billions of dollars more: here’s how to raise the money<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155610/original/image-20170206-18266-1di8p7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australia: there's a lot of it to look after.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASpinifex_Savanna_Central_Australia.jpg">Thomas Schoch/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Extinction threatens iconic Australian birds and animals. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-endangered-species-regent-honeyeater-11294">regent honeyeater</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-endangered-species-orange-bellied-parrot-20777">orange-bellied parrot</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/victoria-must-stop-clearfelling-to-save-leadbeaters-possum-40685">Leadbeater’s possum</a> have all entered the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/australian-endangered-species-4363">list of critically endangered species</a>. </p>
<p>It is too late for the more than 50 species that are already extinct, including bettongs, various wallabies, and <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicthreatenedlist.pl">many others</a>. Despite international commitments, policies and projects, Australia’s biodiversity outcomes remain <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/international/fifth-national-biological-diversity-report">unsatisfactory</a>.</p>
<p>A 2015 <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/conservation/strategy/review-australias-biodiversity-conservation-strategy-2010-2030">review</a> of Australia’s 2010-2050 Biodiversity Conservation Strategy found that it has failed to “effectively guide the efforts of governments, other organisations or individuals”.</p>
<p>Insufficient resourcing is one cause of biodiversity loss. The challenge is impressive. Australia must tackle degradation and fragmentation of habitat, invasive species, unsustainable use of resources, the deterioration of the aquatic environment and water flows, increased fire events, and climate change. </p>
<p>This all requires money to support private landholders conducting conservation activities, to fund research, to manage public lands, and to support other conservation activities conducted by governments, industry, and individuals. </p>
<p>So where can we find the funds?</p>
<h2>How much money is needed?</h2>
<p>We have estimated that Australia’s biodiversity protection requires an equivalent investment to <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS">defence spending</a> – roughly <a href="http://researchdirect.uws.edu.au/islandora/object/uws%3A34692/datastream/PDF/view">2% of gross domestic product</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, such estimates are up for debate given that how much money is required depends on what we want the environment to look like, which methods we use, and how well they work. <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/country/australia">Other studies</a> (see also <a href="http://www.acfonline.org.au/uploads/res_private_investment.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/110/29/12144.full.pdf">here</a> point to a similar conclusion: far more money is needed to achieve significantly better outcomes. </p>
<p>Apart from government funding, private landholders, businesses, communities, Indigenous Australians, and non-government organisations contribute significantly to natural resource management. We were unable to quantify their collective cash and in-kind contributions, as the information is not available. But we do know that farmers spend around <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/PrimaryMainFeatures/4620.0?OpenDocument">A$3 billion</a> each year on natural resource management.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the erosion of environmental values indicates that the level of spending required to sufficiently meet conservation targets far exceeds the amount currently being spent. The investment required is similar to value of agriculture in Australia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155674/original/image-20170206-18517-hl4jhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Conservation doesn’t come cheap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, the concentration of wealth and labour sets a limit to what any given community can pay. </p>
<p>Despite a high GDP per person and very wealthy cities, Australia has <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/topic/agriculture-and-rural-development?locations=AU">fewer than 0.1 people per hectare and a wealth intensity (GDP per hectare) of less than US$2,000</a> due to the sparse population and income of rural Australia.</p>
<p>Australia’s rural population has declined sharply, <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/topic/agriculture-and-rural-development?locations=AU">from over 18% in 1960 to around 10% today</a>. Other countries (for example in Europe) are not limited to the same degree. Even <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/topic/agriculture-and-rural-development?locations=CN">China</a> has a greater rural resource intensity than Australia. </p>
<p>Rural incomes are often volatile, but environmental investments need to be sustained. The <a href="http://murrumbidgeelandcare.asn.au/files/biblio/Tennent%26Lockie(2013).pdf">history of Landcare</a> highlights that private landholders have struggled to secure a reliable investment basis for sustainably managing the environment.</p>
<h2>Can government pay what is required?</h2>
<p>If Australia is serious about the environment, we need to know who will pay for biodiversity protection (a public good). This is especially true given that it is <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/conservation/strategy/review-australias-biodiversity-conservation-strategy-2010-2030">not feasible</a> for rural (particularly Indigenous) landholders and communities to invest the required amount.</p>
<p>Will government be the underpinning investor? The federal government’s current spending program on natural resource management was initiated in 2014 with an allocation of A$2 billion over four years.</p>
<p>This was <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/2434cfef-95c1-4fce-b365-608d713c7b4e/files/environment-pbs-14-15.pdf">split between</a> the second National Landcare Program, the (now-defunded) Green Army, the Working on Country program, the Land Sector Package, the Reef 2050 plan, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, and the Whale and Dolphin Protection Plan.</p>
<p>As well as federal funding, the state, territory, and local governments invest in public lands, bushfire mitigation, waste management, water management, environmental research and development, biodiversity programs, and environmental policies. Local and state government departments together spend around <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4655.02015">A$4.9 billion</a> each year on natural resource management.</p>
<p>The problem is that government spending on natural resource management can not be significantly increased in the near future due to <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/budget-pressures-on-australian-governments-2014/">fiscal pressures and the focus on reducing budget deficits</a>.</p>
<h2>Show us the money</h2>
<p>At a time when Australia is reconsidering many aspects of its environmental policies, we should address the strategy for funding natural resource management. </p>
<p>It should be possible to leverage more private spending on the environment preferably as part of <a href="https://www.oecd.org/env/outreach/33947759.pdf">a coordinated strategy</a>. Diverse, market-based approaches are being used around the world. </p>
<p>For example, we could use market instruments such as <a href="http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/biobanking/">biodiversity banking</a> to support landholders in protecting biodiversity.</p>
<p>Taxation incentives, such as a generous tax offset for landholders who spend money on improving the environment, can be a very powerful catalyst and could be <a href="https://www.rvo.nl/sites/default/files/bijlagen/SEN040%20DOW%20A4%20Greenfunds_tcm24-119449.pdf">crucial for meeting environmental investment needs</a>. </p>
<p>Evidence suggests that integrating a variety of mechanisms into a coordinated business model for the environment is likely to be the most efficient and effective approach. But this will not happen unless Australia faces the fiscal challenge of sustainability head-on.</p>
<p>Australia needs an innovative investment plan for the environment. By combining known funding methods and investment innovation, Australia can reduce the gap between what we currently spend and what the environment needs. </p>
<p>Without a more sophisticated investment strategy, it is likely that Australia will continue on the trajectory of decline.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70401/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia is wealthy, but its huge size and relatively small rural economy mean we’ll have to dig deep to find the cash needed to safeguard our environment.Paul Martin, Director, Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law, University of New EnglandAmy Cosby, Researcher, Centre for Agriculture and Law, University of New EnglandKip Werren, Lecturer in Law, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/559522016-04-06T20:07:28Z2016-04-06T20:07:28ZHow ancient Aboriginal star maps have shaped Australia’s highway network<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116722/original/image-20160330-28455-f7dk0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Somewhere up there is the road you're on.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">R. Scott Hinks/Wikimedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The next time you’re driving down a country road in outback Australia, consider there’s a good chance that very route was originally mapped out by Aboriginal people perhaps thousands of years before Europeans came to Australia. </p>
<p>And like today, they turned to the skies to aid their navigation. Except instead of using a GPS network, they used the stars above to help guide their travels.</p>
<p>Aboriginal people have <a href="https://theconversation.com/stories-from-the-sky-astronomy-in-indigenous-knowledge-33140">rich astronomical traditions</a>, but we know relatively little about their navigational abilities. </p>
<p>We do know that there was a very well established and extensive network of trade routes in operation before 1788. These were used by Aboriginal people for trading in goods and stories, and the trade routes covered <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/36480695">vast distances across the Australian continent</a>. </p>
<h2>Star maps</h2>
<p>I was researching the astronomical knowledge of the <a href="http://www.euahlayipeoplesrepublic.mobi/node/15">Euahlayi</a> and <a href="http://kamilaroianationsidentity.weebly.com/location.html">Kamilaroi</a> Aboriginal peoples of northwest New South Wales in 2013 when I became aware of “star maps” as a means of teaching navigation outside of one’s own local country. </p>
<p>My teacher of this knowledge was Ghillar Michael Anderson, a Euahlayi Culture Man from Goodooga, near the Queensland border. This is where the western plains and the star-filled night sky meet in a seamless and profound display.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116437/original/image-20160324-17835-1b2obi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ghillar Michael Anderson and a possible waypoint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Enlightning Productions</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One night, sitting under those stars in Goodooga, Michael pointed out a pattern of stars to the southeast, and said that they were used to teach Euahlayi travellers how to navigate outside their own country during the summer travel season. </p>
<p>As an astronomer, I immediately realised that those stars were not in the direction of travel that Michael was describing. And anyway, they wouldn’t be visible in the summer, let alone during the day when people would have been travelling. </p>
<p>Michael said that they weren’t used as a map as such, but were used as a memory aid. And in the Aboriginal manner of teaching, he asked me to research this and come back to see if “I had gotten it”.</p>
<p>I did some research, and looked at a route from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodooga,_New_South_Wales">Goodooga</a> to the <a href="http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/bunya-mountains/">Bunya Mountains</a> northwest of Brisbane, where an Aboriginal Bunya nut festival was held every three years until disrupted by European invasion. </p>
<p>It turned out the <a href="http://www.narit.or.th/en/files/2014JAHHvol17/2014JAHH...17..149F.pdf">pattern of stars showed the “waypoints”</a> on the route. These waypoints were usually waterholes or turning places on the landscape. These waypoints were used in a very similar way to navigating with a GPS, where waypoints are also used as stopping or turning points.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116438/original/image-20160324-17824-139o4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Star map route to the Bunya Mountains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Starry Night Education</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Stars to songlines</h2>
<p>Further discussion revealed the reasons and methods of this technique. In the winter camp, when the summer travel was being planned in August or September, a person who had travelled the intended route was tasked with teaching others, who had not made this journey, how to navigate to the intended destination. </p>
<p>The pattern of stars (the “star map”) was used as a memory aid in teaching the route and the waypoints to the destination. After more research I asked Michael if the method of teaching and memorising was by song, as I was aware that songs are known to be an effective way of memorising a sequence in the oral transmission of knowledge. </p>
<p>Michael said, “you got it!”, and I then understood that the very process of creating, then teaching, such a route resulted in what is known as a <a href="http://basementgeographer.com/songlines-how-indigenous-australians-use-music-to-mark-geography/">songline</a>. A songline is a story that travels over the landscape, which is then imprinted with the song (Aboriginal people will say that the landscape imprints the song).</p>
<p>I then learned that there were many routes/songlines from Goodooga to destinations as far as 700km away, which might end up in a ceremonial place, or possibly a trade “fair”. </p>
<p>One such route to <a href="http://www.queensland.com/destination%20information/Quilpie">Quilpie</a>, in Queensland, led to a ceremonial place where <a href="http://www.walkingcountry.com.au/the-trail/the-region/the-arrernte-people">Arrernte</a> people from north of Alice Springs met the Euahlayi for joint ceremonies. </p>
<p>Their route of travel was more than 1,500km, crossing the Simpson Desert in summer, and I was told that they would have their own star map/songline for learning that route. The implication of this is that the use of star maps for teaching travel may have been common across Australia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116439/original/image-20160324-17835-1tydri8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Star map route to the Carnarvon Gorge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Starry Night Education</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Parallels</h2>
<p>Another surprising result of this knowledge came about when I was looking at the star map routes from Goodooga to the Bunya Mountains and <a href="http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/carnarvon-gorge/">Carnarvon Gorge</a> in Queensland. When the star map routes were overlaid over the modern road map, there was a significant overlap with major roads in use today. </p>
<p>After some reflection, the reason for this became clear. The first explorers in this region, such as <a href="http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/mitchell/">Thomas Mitchell</a>, who explored here in 1845-1846, used Aboriginal people as guides and interpreters, who were likely given directions by local Aborigines. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116440/original/image-20160324-10194-nzkn81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carnarvon Gorge and Bunya Mts star maps overlaid on road map.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Google Earth</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These directions would no doubt reflect the easiest routes to traverse, and these were probably routes already established as songlines. Drovers and settlers coming into the region would have used the same routes, and eventually these became tracks and finally highways. </p>
<p>In a sense, the Aboriginal people of Australia had a big part in the layout of the modern Australian road network. And in some cases, such as the Kamilaroi Highway running from the Hunter Valley to Bourke in NSW, this has been recognised in the name.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Robert will be on hand for an Author Q&A between 3 and 4pm AEST on Thursday, April 7, 2016. Post your questions in the comments section below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert S. Fuller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Aboriginal people have been using the stars to help remember routes between distant locations, and these routes are still alive in our highway networks today.Robert S. Fuller, PhD Student Indigenous Cultural Astronomy, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/436312015-06-23T03:40:12Z2015-06-23T03:40:12ZAustralia needs a plan to protect the Outback’s precious water<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85860/original/image-20150622-8986-15htv8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C18%2C5934%2C3980&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Go with the flow: scarce water has allowed Outback species to persist for millennia, where otherwise they might have died out.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jenny Davis</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian Outback is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-australias-outback-is-globally-important-32938">iconic place</a>. It is the nation’s great outdoors and represents a concept of wilderness that many Australians hold dear, and the Red Centre is at the top of many international tourists’ must-see lists. While it <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18761619">covers more than 70% of the continent</a>, this vast area is home to less than 5% of the population, and the Pew Trust <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2014/10/the-modern-outback">describes it</a> as one of the last extensive natural regions left on Earth. It is a landscape of great contrasts: it can be green, lush and bountiful but also dry, dusty, harsh and inhospitable. </p>
<p>Above all, the Outback is defined by water scarcity across all but its most northern areas. As with most rare commodities, Outback water, especially groundwater, is extremely valuable. It is critical to the persistence of natural ecosystems and sustains human settlements.</p>
<p>It seems bizarre, then, that there is no unified national plan to manage the water resources of the Outback, and that such a project does not feature in the <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/science/nerp">National Environmental Research Program</a> unveiled earlier this year. If we want to safeguard Outback water from the threat of overuse posed by fracking and other pressures, a proper Outback water security plan is urgently needed.</p>
<h2>What would the plan look like?</h2>
<p>Similar to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/finally-murray-darling-basin-plan-signed-into-law-10939">Murray-Darling Basin Plan</a>, an Outback water plan must be based on a comprehensive understanding of the size, condition and variability of water resources – both surface water and groundwater – and of how they are connected together. It should be a single plan covering Australian rangelands and deserts, and should take account of all the environmental, social, cultural and economic uses that these scarce water resources support. </p>
<p>More specifically, the plan should involve: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>determining the location and extent of aquifers and catchments that support key biodiversity and cultural sites, particularly in areas near proposed mines and other developments</p></li>
<li><p>working to understand how biodiversity hotspots and wildlife <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugium_(population_biology)/">refugia</a> depend on specific water resources</p></li>
<li><p>providing knowledge, training and logistics for indigenous and local communities to manage and restore important water sites in arid and semi-arid zones</p></li>
<li><p>ensuring that Environmental Impact Statements contain the information needed to assess the impacts of proposed developments on important water sites.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85862/original/image-20150622-8986-au1nms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Relatively dry areas such as the Northern Territory’s Finke River can be transformed by flooding rains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jenny Davis</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An unpredictable landscape</h2>
<p>Rainfall is low and unpredictable across inland Australia, but the rain events that do occur are often very large. They create the floods that flow through normally dry river networks to fill large inland lakes and wetlands, such as <a href="http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/parks/Find_a_Park/Browse_by_region/Flinders_Ranges_and_Outback/Kati_Thanda-Lake_Eyre_National_Park">Kati Thanda</a> (Lake Eyre) in South Australia and the <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/wetlands/report.pl?smode=DOIW;doiw_refcodelist=WA066">Fortescue Marshes</a> in Western Australia. </p>
<p>When the floods come, the newly filled waterbodies become sites of immense but temporary productivity. These large episodic rainfall events, followed by long dry periods, drive the boom-and-bust environments to which many Outback species are well adapted. </p>
<p>But it is not just rainstorms and floods that sustain inland ecosystems. Groundwater is the hidden resource that has ensured the persistence of some species over millennia and supported most Outback human endeavours. This underground water, being out of sight and potentially out of mind, is extremely vulnerable to over-extraction and pollution. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://statements.qld.gov.au/Statement/2015/5/14/qld-exploration-release-underpins-19-billion-gas-industry">recent announcement</a> that the Queensland government will support unconventional gas exploration in the Cooper Basin suggests that we still have a very poor understanding of the importance of water, particularly groundwater, across the region. Fracking (the extraction of unconventional gas) involves removing large volumes of groundwater and the disposal of water with high concentrations of various impurities. Fracking can result in pollution and depletion of groundwater resources <a href="http://www.lockthegate.org.au/about_coal_seam_gas">far beyond recharge rates</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the progress that has been made in mapping and understanding the extent of groundwater resources across the continent has been greatly reduced by the closure of the <a href="http://www.nwc.gov.au/home">National Water Commission</a> and reduction in support for the <a href="http://www.groundwater.com.au/">National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85863/original/image-20150622-9012-79qdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Any port in a storm: water resources are vital to life in the dusty Outback.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jenny Davis</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Safe refuges for millennia</h2>
<p>As my <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12203/abstract">previous research</a> has shown, water resources are vital refuges in dry landscapes. Some subterranean aquifers and mound springs supported by the underground waters of the Great Artesian Basin are “evolutionary refugia”, supporting species that have persisted for up to a million years and which live nowhere else on earth. Springs in the Central Ranges support relict populations of aquatic insect species, such as mayflies, caddisflies and waterpennies, that were once more widespread but became isolated as the continent became increasingly dry. </p>
<p>Groundwater-fed springs across the Outback are likely to be important refuges in the future because they are mostly decoupled from regional rainfall. However, if springs are polluted or allowed to dry completely, extinctions will occur because the specialised species they support cannot easily disperse to live somewhere else. </p>
<p>Much of Australia’s unique wildlife diversity is made up of Outback plants and animals that have taken refuge at these groundwater sites during dry periods, thus allowing them to survive the boom and bust of the continent’s history. Although Australia is globally recognised as a “megadiverse” country, we cannot take this status for granted. We know that multiple and interacting threats are altering the processes that support Outback species. Introduced invasive species and altered fire regimes are <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/15/4531">already of major concern</a>. If we add activities that change water quality and quantity, such as fracking, to the pressures that already exist, we could be at a tipping point in the decline of biodiversity across inland Australia. </p>
<p>The efforts to halt biodiversity decline – including the appointment of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/threatened-species-win-a-voice-in-canberra-but-its-too-late-for-some-28667">Threatened Species Commissioner</a> and a federally funded threatened species program – will amount to little if we ignore the fundamental issue of maintaining good-quality water resources. Water is a critical resource in the Outback, and we need to know where it is, how much there is, how old it is and what depends on it, before it is allocated or polluted by new developments. </p>
<p>The need to provide greater surety of water for extractive industries and intensive food production must be balanced against the environmental and cultural values long associated with perennial springs and rockholes, desert river networks and episodic lakes. Coal seam gas and mining have the ability to change and potentially destroy natural systems, on timescales far beyond our generation. We need a water security plan for the Outback that recognises the fundamental importance of water to everything we value – environmental, social and cultural, as well as economic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny Davis receives funding from the ARC.</span></em></p>The Outback covers 70% of Australia, and its water is precious and scarce. Yet there is no joined-up plan to monitor and manage Outback water, despite the wealth of species and communities that depend on it.Jenny Davis, Head of School, School of Environment, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/387012015-03-16T19:15:10Z2015-03-16T19:15:10ZAboriginal lifestyles could fix the hole in the heart of Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74882/original/image-20150316-7064-1ykh1l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need policies that meaningfully include Aboriginal people in ways forward. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Amnesty International, Chloe Geraghty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The prime minister’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-11/abbott-defends-indigenous-communities-lifestyle-choice/6300218">recent assertion</a> that the government cannot afford to fund the “lifestyle choices” of remotely based Aboriginal people is an opportunity to increase the debate about the future of outback Australia.</p>
<p>Tony Abbott was repeating that time-worn assertion that Aboriginal people represent little else but a drain on the public purse. While many Australians do not like this view of ourselves, there is no doubt the prime minister’s view has a wide currency and is loaded with electoral appeal in Australia.</p>
<p>In response, commentators have argued that Aboriginal people have a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-11/abbott-defends-indigenous-communities-lifestyle-choice/6300218">right to continue</a> in their own cultural ways; that they are not <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVEFdilwt0g">taking a “lifestyle choice”</a> by living there; that they will become <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/fred-chaney-warns-of-fringe-dweller-indigenous-policy/story-fn9hm1pm-1227260637039">fringe-dwelling immigrants</a> with all of the marginalisation that this entails; they are potentially <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4195263.htm">not welcome in other parts of the country</a>.</p>
<p>Others have argued that Aboriginal people living remotely have a special and continuing relationship with their own lands that is crucial to their <a href="http://thelowitjainstitute.cmail1.com/t/ViewEmail/j/C5E11931C50B57F8/EC330118E5BD929C6A4D01E12DB8921D">health and wellbeing</a>; that movement off their lands would be <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/lifestyle-choice-tony-abbott-stands-by-controversial-comments-despite-indigenous-leader-backlash-20150311-140mn5.html">a threat to their Native Title</a>; and that hundreds of other, non-Aboriginal rural towns <a href="http://media.crikey.com.au/dm/newsletter/dailymail_17235a183d80be5d5a82b6b479391a52.html#article_34205">have been uneconomic for decades</a>. </p>
<p>Dr Gracelyn Smallwood, NAIDOC Person of the Year, has argued that history demonstrates that the threatened forced closures of Aboriginal settlements are likely to <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/forced-aboriginal-removals-will-cost-taxpayers-more/story-e6frg6n6-1227260518761">cost the state more</a> than if people were supported to stay in their homelands. This example highlights how polices in Aboriginal affairs generally are not developed out of consultation or a research base.</p>
<h2>Australia’s heartland</h2>
<p>The reports of the need for more support for remote Australia are seemingly ignored by government policy directions. As Pat Dodson, senior Aboriginal leader from the Kimberley, argues, there is an <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-lifestyle-comments-highlight-the-lack-of-policy-in-aboriginal-affairs-20150312-141u4s.html">absence of effective government policy</a> in this area</p>
<p>There are many reasons why we need to think clearly and strategically about remote Australia, the existing crisis in governance and what we want the future to look like. Remote Australia is approximately 85% of the land mass and only 800,000 people in a highly urbanised country. </p>
<p>Eighty five percent of the population lives within 50 kilometres of the coastline. This is the voting block that is driving government policies. Thus it is this area of Australia that our present governance system overwhelmingly addresses. </p>
<p>In September 2012 the national organisation Desert Knowledge Australia released a report, <a href="http://www.desertknowledge.com.au/Files/Fixing-the-hole-in-Australia-s-Heartland.aspx">Fixing the Hole in Australia’s Heartland</a>, that identifies the defining features of remote Australia. Importantly, it sets out the challenges of governance faced by all nations with similar remote lands. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74884/original/image-20150316-7058-aaywkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rusty Stewart</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The project team and the reference group comprise an impressive array of people with considerable knowledge and experience of remote Australia. Notable are the former Minster for Aboriginal Affairs, the Hon Fred Chaney AO and Dr Peter Shergold AC who was at that time the most senior public servant in Australia. </p>
<p>Above all this report moved away from defining the issues to do with remote Australia as an “Aboriginal problem”. To quote from the report:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The governance of remote Australia should not be cast as an “Aboriginal issue” – it is about ineffective government arrangements, disengagement and national indifference. </p>
<p>These problems are too often perceived only in the context of the dysfunction of remote Aboriginal settlements and seen therefore as purely “Aboriginal” issues rather than issues of government capability. That is a mistake. Many non-Aboriginal Australians face similar issues as a result of their remote location.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I recently interviewed the project coordinator and lead author of the report, Dr Bruce Walker. He admitted the government response to this report has been negligible and disappointing. He is adamant that the need for an Outback Commission recommended in the report is now urgent and critical to address the needs of the people who live in remote Australia. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Outback Commission would be an opportunity for governance to focus entirely on remote Australia, have funds for crucial developments there, operate across jurisdictions to get things done and importantly, focus on a narrative for settlement of this region that provides security, safety and services to 85% of our land mass.</p>
<p>The market will not resolve issues in remote Australia. There is a decline in agricultural production and not enough population to service production and conservation needs.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74880/original/image-20150316-7039-klhedc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An aerial image over Henbury Cattle Station in Alice Springs, Northern Territory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Marianna Massey</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Outback’s global significance as we move into the Anthropocene</h2>
<p>The recent Pew Charitable Trust’s report – <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2014/10/the-modern-outback">The Modern Outback: nature, people and the future of remote Australia</a> – documents the huge diversity and value of this part of the world. It is one of only a handful of large natural areas remaining on Earth including the rapidly diminishing wildlands of the Amazon basin; the boreal forests and tundra of Canada, Alaska and Siberia and the Sahara.</p>
<p>In our “<a href="http://theconversation.com/forget-saving-the-earth-its-an-angry-beast-that-weve-awoken-27156">age of humans</a>”, where the world populations are such as to have <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-pre-holocene-climate-is-returning-and-it-wont-be-fun-27742">irrevocably reduced the natural world</a>, we face a future of <a href="http://anthropocenejournal.com/2012/03/29/ten-urbanization-statistics/">increased urbanisation</a>. </p>
<p>The move to cities will increase as the degradation and loss of productivity of lands increases. Clearly, we need people to live well in what many find as hostile environments. Aboriginal custodians have a long history of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787">creating abundance in the natural world</a> and are those most likely to want to be there. They need to be supported to stay.</p>
<p>Evidence for the sustainability of Aboriginal settlements on their lands exists where Aboriginal people are moving increasingly into collaborations with scientists and other researchers <a href="https://theconversation.com/remote-indigenous-communities-are-vital-for-our-fragile-ecosystems-38700#comment_617528">to maintain the viability </a> of fragile ecosystems on their lands. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74883/original/image-20150316-7064-1ppdgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rusty Stewart</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their role in mapping biodiversity, crucial to maintaining sustainable country in remote places, is unique and without parallel. This activity has important spin-offs in education and employment. </p>
<p>Maintaining populations in remote Australia will involve increasing investments in renewable energy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/saving-water-in-a-drying-climate-lessons-from-south-west-australia-28517">water</a> and <a href="http://eon.org.au/projects/eon-thriving-communities/eon-edible-gardens/">food supplies</a>, including <a href="http://theconversation.com/for-millions-wild-food-is-no-fad-but-a-matter-of-life-or-death-24997">wild foods</a>. This will have short and long term economic and educational benefits for all of us as we move further into the Anthropocene. </p>
<p>These benefits are beginning to be obvious from the innovations that are already occurring in remote Australia. One good example is the <a href="http://www.catprojects.com.au">renewable energy initiatives</a> of the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) in the Desert Peoples Precinct in Alice Springs. Projects include the solar-powered Bushlight that is now being <a href="http://www.catprojects.com.au/catprojects-our-projects/">exported to villages in India</a>, and <a href="http://www.catprojects.com.au/power-systems-engineering/">renewable energy projects</a> in Australia and the Pacific.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most important argument for supporting Aboriginal people to live on their own lands in remote Australia is that their capacity to survive over many thousands of years in changing environments <a href="http://theconversation.com/not-beyond-imagining-songlines-for-a-new-world-7173">demonstrates resilience</a>. It is this quality that we will need in bucket loads in the future. </p>
<p>What we now urgently need is a government with the vision and the acumen to put in place policies that match the demands of our future in this country and on this planet – policies that meaningfully include Aboriginal people in ways forward, as part of the solution, not the problem.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Grieves receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Recently, Tony Abbott asserted the government couldn’t afford to fund the “lifestyle choices” of remotely-based Aboriginal people. But such communities could be key to meeting the demands of our future.Victoria Grieves Williams, ARC Indigenous Research Fellow, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/387002015-03-13T00:45:14Z2015-03-13T00:45:14ZRemote Indigenous communities are vital for our fragile ecosystems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74667/original/image-20150312-13485-1bk69en.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C668%2C447&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indigenous rangers like Yugul Mangi senior women (from left to right) Edna Nelson, Cherry Daniels and Julie Roy, are crucial guardians of the outback environment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emilie Ens</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid the questioning of government support for remote Aboriginal communities and what Prime Minister Tony Abbott called the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-the-real-story-on-indigenous-australia-social-beats-old-media-38698">lifestyle choices</a>” of those who live there, the growing role of Aboriginal management of large areas of remote Australia has been overlooked. </p>
<p>There are 1,200 small, discrete Indigenous communities in regional and remote Australia with various sources of income, including federal government “<a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/indigenous/workingoncountry">Working on Country</a>” funding, as well as meagre and tightly regulated <a href="https://theconversation.com/income-management-doesnt-work-so-lets-look-at-what-does-34792">welfare payments</a>. They fulfil a key role in populating large areas of outback Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74614/original/image-20150312-13499-1ese22t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74614/original/image-20150312-13499-1ese22t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74614/original/image-20150312-13499-1ese22t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74614/original/image-20150312-13499-1ese22t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74614/original/image-20150312-13499-1ese22t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74614/original/image-20150312-13499-1ese22t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74614/original/image-20150312-13499-1ese22t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aboriginal communities cover vast and remote areas of Australia in need of environmental management.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Altman and Markham 2014</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Outback Australia has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-australias-outback-is-globally-important-32938">high biodiversity</a> and would otherwise be unoccupied – and so open to a host of threats including intense and widespread wildfires and invasive species. There is also a <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/03/11/homelands-under-the-hammer-again-from-the-aspiring-pm-for-indigenous-policy/">long-standing recognition</a> of outstations as important to maintaining the connection of remote-living Aboriginal people to their culture and customary responsibilities.</p>
<p>More than a third of Australia is recognised as Aboriginal owned and managed land, mainly in very remote regions. Given ancestral connections and Aboriginal people’s customary obligations to Country (the land with its inherent natural, cultural and spiritual meaning), they are the best placed to look after it, it is a practice that can be <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/remote-communities-arent-a-utopian-lifestyle-choice-but-they-are-good-for-our-people-20150311-1415ji.html">very important to them</a>. </p>
<p>As Cherry Wulumirr Daniels, Senior Ngandi Traditional Owner and founder of the Yugul Mangi Women Rangers in Ngukurr <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCoPLvWO0QM&list=PLJxkJxV1-yXlOWXwLq7KHa1orWJ8FUvmw&index=6">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our ancestors were Rangers - we were Rangers for 40,000 years and are Rangers today. It’s a responsibility for us to look after those things. I am owned by and have ownership of those things…ownership to a tree or stone or billabong. We are not doing this for ourselves we are doing this for our Country and for our people and for the sake of our culture, keeping our culture alive and strong.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DCoPLvWO0QM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Remote reserves</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/indigenous/ipa/">Indigenous Protected Areas</a> (IPAs) represent a large and growing proportion of Australia’s <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/land/nrs">National Reserve System</a>, especially in remote Australia, and are funded largely by the federal government. IPAs are declared voluntarily by Traditional Owners who commit to maintaining the biodiversity and cultural values within them. To achieve this, they also receive government support to establish and operate Indigenous ranger programs. Without remote communities, it is likely that many of these programs would collapse.</p>
<p>Ranger programs provide economic value and culturally meaningful jobs to Indigenous people, who in turn manage threats to Country, protecting ecosystems through management of fire and invasive species, and seeking to rehabilitate degraded lands. </p>
<p>As any farmer will tell you, you cannot just walk off the land and expect it to return to a pre-disturbance state. If you do that, feral animals and weeds spread, large destructive fires become the norm, and Australia’s unique biodiversity is further threatened. </p>
<p>Indeed, the rapid and widespread <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-and-national-park-managers-are-failing-northern-australias-vanishing-mammals-10089">declines of native mammals</a> across the tropical north might well be due to past de-population and inadequate resourcing of remote communities and regions. </p>
<h2>Boosting knowledge</h2>
<p>Aboriginal people in remote communities are also <a href="http://www.academia.edu/9667899/Ens_E.J._Pert_P._Clarke_P.A._et_al._2014._Indigenous_biocultural_knowledge_in_ecosystem_science_and_management_Review_and_insight_from_Australia._Biological_Conservation._Vol.181_pp.133-149">collaborating with scientists</a> to <a href="http://aibk.info/">understand better the condition of biodiversity</a> in remote Australia. This can benefit <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/261799051_The_Australian_monsoonal_tropics_An_opportunity_to_protect_unique_biodiversity_and_secure_benefits_for_Aboriginal_communities">both conservation and socio-economic development</a>. </p>
<p>One example is the Yugul Mangi Rangers, based in the remote community of Ngukurr, Southeast Arnhem Land, who are working with Macquarie University, the <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/">Atlas of Living Australia</a> and the Australian National University to <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/blogs-news/indigenous/learning-by-doing-the-ala-is-sponsoring-yugul-mangi-rangers-and-ecologists-to-conduct-two-way-biodiversity-research-in-remote-arnhem-land/">survey biodiversity</a> in one of the least scientifically understood parts of Australia. </p>
<p>Similarly, in north-central Arnhem Land, the Djelk Rangers, together with the Maningrida School, have worked with scientists to identify <a href="http://www.scientistsinschools.edu.au/showcase/scholes-raven.html">25 new species of tarantula</a>, as well as milking spiders for anti-venom production. The school has also hosted a pilot Learning on Country program that has seen improved attendance for senior students considering a career in rangering.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74616/original/image-20150312-13523-121ywq7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74616/original/image-20150312-13523-121ywq7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74616/original/image-20150312-13523-121ywq7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74616/original/image-20150312-13523-121ywq7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74616/original/image-20150312-13523-121ywq7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74616/original/image-20150312-13523-121ywq7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74616/original/image-20150312-13523-121ywq7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yugul Mangi Rangers Kelvin Rogers and Simon Ponto found the near-threatened Leichhardt’s Grasshopper in remote SE Arnhem fauna surveys.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Emilie Ens</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Aboriginal Sea Rangers, also based in remote communities, are playing a key role in management of endangered sea turtles. Australia’s northern coastline is monitored by more than 40 clan groups through the <a href="www.ghostnets.com.au">Ghostnets Australia</a> alliance, which has recovered more than 13,000 discarded or lost fishing nets, which might otherwise have <a href="http://theconversation.com/ghostnets-fish-on-marine-rubbish-threatens-northern-australian-turtles-11585">killed endangered marine life</a>.</p>
<h2>National benefits</h2>
<p>Indigenous Protected Areas and ranger programs perform a vital public service of national and global conservation benefit. Though not without challenges, these programs are performing well above expectations and continue to grow with both Aboriginal community, government, private sector and philanthropic support. They enjoy considerable widespread support and acclaim. </p>
<p>So why would the Australian government consider undermining such rare and uncontested success? Rangers are not only important for Australia’s ecological health, but these jobs also empower people and are one of the few culturally meaningful jobs on offer in remote communities. </p>
<p>Support for remote communities, which are often in hard-to-reach places with climates that many non-Indigenous Australians find unbearable, is crucial to maintaining this public service. Of course there are challenges in providing housing and infrastructure, education and health services in such remote places. Like remote pastoralists, some indigenous families make personal sacrifices to send children away from home for education or else ensure attendance in remote community schools. </p>
<p>Tony Abbott has asked the wrong question. What needs to be considered is not the the value to taxpayers in supporting so-called lifestyle choices, but rather how we, as a nation, can provide sustained support to Aboriginal people who take the hard decision to live “on-country” so as to meet their enduring cultural responsibilities and improve their livelihood prospects. </p>
<p>All over this continent, from the remotest deserts to the tropical savannas, Aboriginal people are committed to maintaining the environmental values of their lands for themselves and for all Australians. In different political circumstances they might be lauded as nation-builders and given the sort of praise and support that colonial frontiersmen have historically enjoyed. </p>
<p>At a time when governments of all persuasions are struggling to close the gap, it is sensible to recognise the opportunities that remote Indigenous communities give to their residents and the nation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Moritz receives funding from The Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emilie-Jane Ens receives funding from The Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Altman is a foundation director of Karrkad-Kanjdji Ltd a company that seeks to raise funds to support the operations of the Djelk and Warddeken Indigenous Protected Areas in west Arnhem Land.</span></em></p>Remote Indigenous communities aren’t just places to live - they are also crucial for supporting ranger programs and other projects that protect the environment in areas that might otherwise go untended.Craig Moritz, Professor, Research School of Biology, Australian National UniversityEmilie Ens, DECRA Research Fellow, Macquarie UniversityJon Altman, Emeritus Professor, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.