NESP Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub

Kakadu NESP Team Eureka Prize for STEM Inclusion finalists.

NESP researchers have built on long-term collaborations with Bininj/Mungguy Traditional Owners to develop and apply Bininj/Mungguy indicators of cultural-ecosystem health for the floodplains. These indicators are being used to identify priority areas for targeted para grass control and monitor the effectiveness of treatments.

Remote communities on Cape York Peninsula face heavy loads of marine debris such as ghost nets that wash up on north Queensland beaches. The remoteness of these communities makes it a challenge to deal with this waste and debris which mostly comes from other places.

Feral pigs on Gulf beaches were predating on the eggs in 100% of marine turtle nests. Hub research is developing technologies to link monitoring with adaptive management responses by Aak Puul Ngantam rangers, meaning that more baby turtles are hatching & reaching the waters of the Gulf.

Did you know Gulf of Carpentaria coasts are critically important habitat for migratory shorebirds? These birds fly to Australia from as far away as Alaska every year, and rely on the worms, crabs, clams and other food of the Gulf mudflats and sandflats to fatten up for their journey. This collaboration between Carpentaria Land Council Aboriginal Corporation and Griffith University is showing just how important the Gulf is for these long-distance fliers.

Flows from rivers into the Gulf of Carpentaria contain nutrients that support the growth and reproduction of important fisheries species like banana prawns and barramundi. This project investigated the importance of three rivers – the Mitchell, Flinders and Gilbert – to Gulf fisheries.

Australia is home to 7% of the world’s mangroves, mostly located in the tropics. During the summer of 2015-6, one of the worst mangrove dieback events ever recorded devastated around 7400 hectares of mangroves along more than 1000 km of Gulf of Carpentaria coastline. This project produced a field guide for Indigenous rangers to monitor mangrove condition in the Gulf.