Developing an Indigenous wetland monitoring and management toolkit

Project start date: 01/04/2024
Project end date: 30/10/2025
NESP funding: $257,134 (GST-exclusive)

Wetlands within the Kimberley region are critical ecosystems from a conservation perspective, with their health closely tied to Traditional Owner ways of knowing, being and doing. However, Kimberley wetlands face widespread threats from increased water-development, climate change, and invasive and feral species.

Indigenous ranger teams throughout Northern Australia protect wetlands from threats using various management actions (e.g. fencing, weeding, protective burning, monitoring, and knowledge sharing). Rangers are also challenged with measuring if these efforts are achieving their desired outcomes, that is, enhancing values or mitigating threats.

This project is creating a wetland monitoring and management toolkit to address a growing interest in monitoring methods that Indigenous rangers can use to assess wetland health and inform management. The toolkit aims to empower Indigenous rangers, Traditional Owners, and Elders to plan, implement and evaluate wetland monitoring projects within the context of their Healthy Country Plans.

Co-designed with Kimberley Indigenous ranger groups, the toolkit is founded on Indigenous aspirations for wetlands and draws upon Aboriginal and scientific knowledge in a multiple evidence-based approach.

This project is a collaboration between The University of Western Australia, Environs Kimberley, the peak environmental non-government organisation for the Kimberley, and Kimberley Indigenous Ranger teams.

Focusing on the Kimberley region as a case study, the project is consolidating over a decade of research and collaborations between UWA, Environs Kimberley and Indigenous ranger teams, with learnings for the broader community, government agencies and natural resource management groups.

Key research areas

To develop an Indigenous wetland monitoring and management toolkit, this project is:

• reviewing Indigenous people’s wetland monitoring work nationally and internationally
• conducting pilot studies to assist Kimberley Indigenous ranger teams to refine monitoring methods
• developing a monitoring toolkit through questionnaires and a targeted knowledge exchange workshop.

The Toolkit

By showcasing the experiences of Kimberley Indigenous ranger teams, the toolkit will:

• provide practical methods for rangers to strategically monitor wetland health
• demonstrate how rangers are measuring the effectiveness of management actions
• show how ranger teams have used a ‘multiple evidence base’ approach to draw on Indigenous knowledge and Western science in assessing wetlands
• build ranger team capacity to plan, deliver, and evaluate wetland projects using Healthy Country Planning steps.

By sharing how Kimberley rangers have conducted adaptive wetland management and monitoring, the toolkit will support stronger, Indigenous-led wetland management across the Kimberley and beyond.