Case Study

ARNHEM LAND PLATEAU, NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA

Introduction
@The Australian case highlights several themes relevant to working landscapes globally. First, it discusses indigenous co-management of resources in both Kakadu National Park and Arnhem aboriginal lands, in cooperation with the government of Australia. Indigenous and aboriginal peoples of the world are often overlooked or brushed aside in conservation science. Until recently, they have only rarely been explicitly considered to be a part of the ecosystems or the biodiversity the international science community seeks to conserve. Their potential role as partners in the goal of sustaining biodiversity for the future has often also received scarce attention. This is regrettable given that many of the world's hot spots of biodiversity also correspond to lands where indigenous peoples retain de facto land tenure and still engage in traditional resource management activities. It is all the more tragic given that the threats to biodiversity in many regions often have their roots in a history of exploitation, conquest, and dispossession of native people and their lands, as is the case in Arnhem land.
@In addition, however, the Australian case profiles the recent and rapid development of a vibrant, collaborative restoration movement. The Landcare movement has taken root in the non-aboriginal or semi-acculturated lands of southwest Arnhem Plateau, where a century of imported European agricultural practices and other activities have led to severe land degradation. It is, however, linked to a growing network of grassroots and state-sponsored local organizations throughout Australia involving thousands of individual participants. Based on mutual concern for the health of the overall ecosystem, Landcare groups also actively communicate and collaborate with the aboriginal people of Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park.

Physical Description
@Arnhem Land Plateau is an ecological region covering about 180,000 km2. It is surrounded by seas on three sides and the Western Australian Shield (dry bushland and desert) on the fourth. It comprises a drainage system which begins in a relatively mountainous ridge area (with elevations up to 2500 m) and includes three main watersheds: decentralized streams in the northeast, Roper River Watershed in the south, and Daly-Alligator River Watershed Clusters in the west and northwest.
The climate is delineated by the wet season (Nov-Mar) and the dry season (Apr-Oct). Most of the 130-150 centimeters of annual rainfall is concentrated during the wet season. This level of rainfall tends to leach the already acidic soil (mainly sand and silty loam), making this area of Australia one of the poorest in soil fertility. In addition, seasonal extremes in stream flow can lead to high levels of erosion in non-vegetated areas.
@The plateau consists of 8 major habitat types: 1) sandstone escarpments; 2) monsoon forests; 3) riparian zones; 4) floodplains; 5) paperback swamps; 6) eucalyptus woodlands; 7) mangrove forests; and 8) coastal areas. Some ecosystems are of great significance in terms of their biological diversity. For example, the Plateau’s tidal flats contain almost all of Australia's mangrove species.
The plateau is home to hundreds of species including 62 mammals, 280 birds, 123 reptiles, 25 amphibians, 51 freshwater fish, thousands of invertebrates, and 1,600 plants. Native species are threatened by numerous exotics that have become naturalized in the wake of European settlement, including feral buffalo, the floating fern, and the prickly shrub. The keystone species are buffalo, termites, and ants. Feral buffalo play vital roles in microhabitat modification, while termites and ants mediate nutrient cycling and seed dispersal.
@The primary natural disturbance regime is fire. 50% or more of the savanna vegetation burns annually during the dry season. The primary fuel is understory vegetation, which is dominated by native grasses. In wooded areas, fires are not carried in the canopy because the dominant tree, eucalyptus, does not hold much flammable oil in its leaves.

Human Activity
@The indigenous peoples of Arnhem Land, the Aborigines, have inhabited the Plateau continuously for the last 60,000 years. Their traditional lifestyle continues to be semi-nomadic, and subsistence needs are met through hunting and gathering. Cultural traditions decree that humans have specific responsibilities as participants in and stewards of their natural environments. Modern-day Aborigines are fortunate among the indigenous peoples of the world in that their rights as traditionalists and new landowners are well-established and respected.
@The Aborigines of Arnhem Land Plateau first had contact with Europeans in 1827, when the British established settlements in the north. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the primary land uses by the settlers were buffalo hunting, cattle grazing, and mining. Pastoral activities and mineral exploitation expanded in the 1970s, and it was found that ecological stresses such as soil erosion, salinity, acidification, and waterlogging gradually made rural declines severe. Fresh water resources were scarce and degraded, and more than 50% of the forests and woodlands had been cleared or severely modified. Agricultural land was affected as well, as reflected in the decreased numbers of farms and aging rural population. Farm profits declined by 350% in a two-year period, causing widespread poverty and serious social and health problems.
@Because of these and other issues, this region became a hotbed of conflict regarding environmental, landscape, social, and political issues among conservationists, tribes, and developers. Eventually, the severe land degradation inspired a shift from exploitative land-uses toward better conservation, ecotourism and more sustainable usage. The Plateau is now regarded as three major watershed subunits with three different landscape approaches. These approaches and subunits are the collaboratively managed indigenously-owned Kakadu national park; the traditional grassroots Aboriginal Land Reserve; and the collaborative community-based Landcare Movement of the Euro-Australians which includes urbanized areas and pastoral plains.

The Approaches
Top-Down Collaborative Conservation (Kakadu National Park)
@Kakadu National Park lies 257 km from the city of Darwin along the access-restricted Arnhem Highway. It is 20,000 km2 and includes the entire catchments of both the South Alligator and East Alligator Rivers.Twenty-five years ago, pastoralism, uranium mining, and traditional aboriginal use dominated the area. In 1979, however, the federal government proclaimed a small part of the area a national park and placed it under the ownership of the local Aborigines. Several years of expansion followed in which two significant actions were taken: 1) old pastoral leases were terminated, and 2) in-park mining companies agreed to site restoration and mitigation in exchange for continued operations. The park is now listed as a world heritage site under the UNESCO Convention Concerning Cultural and Natural World Heritage and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance.
@This aboriginal-owned national park is regarded as a model for co-management by tribes and conservationists. The indigenous Northern Land Council and three local tribal associations collectively established the Land Trust and leased land-use rights for Kakadu land to the National Park Administration. Through this new partnership, the traditional landowners jointly manage their own lands with conservation scientists and outside experts.
@This subunit serves all local residents as well as outside communities. Some Aboriginal tribes continue to inhabit the park (as is their right as landowners) and sustain a traditional lifestyle. They have primary use of the land but, for the most part, avoid areas of the park where they are likely to meet visitors. In the 1990s, the visitation rate was up to 200,000 people annually. The related tourism and service industry around Kakadu National Park became the biggest revenue earner in the whole Northern Territory, second only to mining. It is estimated that tourism brought US$20.5 million each year to the Territory and was responsible for 6% of employment. In light of the varied uses and interests in the park, the joint Board of Management reviews the shifting cultural as well as environmental considerations on a daily basis.

Conservation

Exotic Weeds. During a brief period of pasture development in Kakadu, exotic pastoral species were introduced. Those introduced plants, which included 29 grass species, became weeds. Proliferation of these exotic weeds has caused park managers to consider a conservation program to address alien plant invasion. Their measures include restoring native species and monitoring hydrological cycles, fire regimes, and visual impacts.

Fire Management. Aboriginal people and pastoralists all understand how to use fire as a widespread management tool in this region. Kakadu National Park managers utilize the Aboriginal traditional burning techniques, which were developed over millennia. This expert system prefers "cool" burns in the early dry season to reduce fuel loads of savanna grasses and woodlands. Prescribed fires burn along roadsides, and around buildings and fire sensitive habitats. Aboriginal inhabitants of the park also undertake burning in their areas as a traditional resource management and hunting practice. It is estimated that 35% of the lowland, 31% of the escarpment and 25% of the floodplain are burned annually. These cool fires cause little permanent damage to savanna woodlands because of thick protective barks and fire-adapted life cycles. The patchy mosaic (unburned, early burned, and late burned lands) recreates the similar pattern of traditional Aboriginal burning, and is proven to maintain native flora and fauna.

Kakadu National Park

Grassroots Traditions (Aboriginal Land Reserve)
@Aboriginal Land Reserve, over 94,000 km2, is totally private indigenous land. The area has been the home of many different Aboriginal clan groups for 60,000 years and even today as many as 40 separate languages are spoken. Tribes of the Yolngu group currently inhabit the Reserve. These Aborigines maintain a hunting-and-gathering lifestyle, but have incorporated cash income through trading and federal welfare benefits.
@In the colonization period from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, the Aboriginal diaspora pushed them into the interior of Arnhem Land. White pioneers established pastoral stations (fenced-in camps) and integrated the Aboriginal people into range life as labor and low-level managers. In 1931, however, after a number of indigenous rights movements and riots, the federal government reserved the whole northeastern part of the Plateau for the use of the Aboriginal people. The Land Right Act of 1976 gave these tribesmen power to establish the land-claims, thus allowing aboriginal owners to sustain their traditional hunting-gathering fields as private land.
@In many ways the Aboriginal Land Reserve is a truly integrated ecological and cultural working landscape. On the one hand, the Yolngu's hunting-and-gathering lifestyle requires a diverse landscape to sustain it. This is partially achieved through traditional ecological management tools, such as prescribed burns, which allow the people to modify the landscape sustainably as they travel through the lowlands and mountains of the Reserve. On the other hand, they believe the continuation of all life depends on the correct performance of the stewardship acts invented by their ancestors. In their worldview, cultural identity is a complex relationship between kinship, ancestry, and environment that requires they perpetuate ecological management. As a consequence, maintenance of environmental productivity and biodiversity are their personal responsibilities, and any declines are viewed as a result of their own failures.
@Tribal people traditionally maintain low human impact on the local wildlife and landscape patterns. However, their grassroots landscape approaches have gradually become influenced by modernization. Prior to external contact, the aboriginal people were self-sufficient, but recently they have become partially dependent on market foods. It appears that the introduction of market commodities and technology, and the payment of welfare benefits in cash, has resulted in some transformation in subsistence production. However, further information on their lifestyles, social institutions, and land management is limited for outsiders.

Arnhem Land

Long Yam

Taro Lily (Cunjevoi) and green ant nest

Collaborative Community-based Conservation (Landcare Movement)
@The region outside the protected areas has been settled by Euro-Australians since the nineteenth century. This population is concentrated in the cities and hinterlands of Darwin, Daly River, Katherine, and Roper Valley. Each area has a different use and history: Darwin, the largest, is a remodeled park-like multi-cultural city with over 50 ethnic groups and nationalities; Daly River is a sparsely populated landscape devoted to pastoral use; Katherine has a history of heavy gold mining; and Roper Valley is dominated by farming and grazing.
@In all these areas, introduced agricultural, pastoral, and industrial practices have been found to be highly inappropriate for the landscape, which in turn affects the people. Lands are stressed with deepening crises in depletion and degradation of water, soils, and endemic flora and fauna. Soil erosion and productivity loss is high. Many farm families have abandoned their land, and those who remain are running larger farms with fewer people and higher levels of debt and stress. Access to facilities such as schools and hospitals is declining, and rural towns are withering socially and economically. This part of Australia demonstrates how a landscape can be degraded to the point of being severely limited in the work it can do for itself and the people who depend on it.
@To help alleviate these problems, in the early 1990s, farmers and rural residents in the Plateau began to form voluntary groups to tackle problems such as salinity, wind erosion, and pest issues at a district scale. They registered under the title of "Landcare" as part of a nation-wide community conservation movement. In the mid-1990s, Landcare gradually switched from a federally-funded national project to a partnership-based co-management and collaboration between communities and government. Currently, the number of Landcare groups in urban, rural, and coastal areas is swelling and there is substantial evidence that Landcare is becoming gaining importance in the international community.
@Landcare groups are proven to solve problems at a district scale which cannot be effectively tackled at the individual property level, especially water-related issues (salinity, erosion, waterlogging, water quality decline, and irrigation management); nature conservation (preservation of biodiversity); and management of vertebrate pests and weeds. In general, a Landcare group is composed of up to 100 volunteers who work together to develop more sustainable land management for 500 to 15 million ha. Landcare groups create collective social pressure in favor of developing more sustainable farming systems, reinforcing and supporting individual farmers who are ready to abandon their lands, and encouraging others to become involved . Landcare projects cover almost all of Arnhem Land Plateau outside the protected areas, and membership among primary producers is close to 50%, the highest of any State or Territory in Australia.
@Most Landcare activities focus on pastoral areas and attempt to avoid erosion and salinity and to reduce destructive management practices such as clearing, fertilization, and tillage. Bushcare and watercare also emphasize increasing wildlife habitat and promoting biodiversity. In addition, a number of Landcare groups (including rural aboriginal tribes) work on vegetation restoration and community-based watershed management.


Conclusion
@Landscape is a geographic unit, large enough to comprise both nature (i.e. the biophysical or nonhuman environment) and a particular human settlement group. The concept of landscape can be used as a research tool to allow a wide range of analysis. From the different perspectives of Kakadu National Park, Arnhem Land Reserve, and the Landcare Movement, the suggestion is that a working landscape serves the broad human population and biodiversity for diverse ecological and cultural demands. People bear responsibilities to sustain this landscape to work holistically for all life forms, and maintain an explicit active concern between human groups and their respective environments.
@From the three cases of Arnhem Land Plateau, landscape use and its ‘working’ attributes become a discourse that initiates social conflicts, movements, and changes regarding environmental responsibilities. It suggests the range of potential possibilities for cultural approaches to working landscapes, such as law, scientific arguments, local practical use, or spiritual goals, which come to be adopted by different groups. But it is essential to create an understanding that a workable landscape is a broader meta-community problem and not just farmers’ problems or governmental problems. In Arnhem Land Plateau, we see strong evidence of change in the form of renewed tribal identity and a broad-based Landcare network both struggling toward a workable landscape that integrates the needs of all people and biodiversity. New institutional mechanisms or platforms are being constructed to share all the concerns of different representatives, and ultimately to achieve landscape consensus by delivering social equality, economic efficiency and ecological integrity.
@In northern Australia, a cohesive natural landscape has been divided into three discrete subunits based on differing modern histories, cultural traditions, and salience of the dominant political structures and social institutions. The question of whether or not such partitions constitute a truly working landscape at the aggregate level is open to debate; still, it is possible to evaluate the level of functional work within each subunit. In the Landcare movement areas, problems of rural poverty and stagnation revolve around the dangers inherent in importing land uses and practices that are highly inappropriate for the local ecology and culture. In Kakadu National Park and Arnhem Land Reserve, the main issue is how to respect and sustain strong cultural norms—which are adapted to a particular ecological setting and necessary for that setting’s current integrity—within an imposed socio-political climate. The top-down approach has been successful in Kakadu National Park in that it protected the area for a particular cultural use; land management, however, is ultimately the responsibility of the local people as interpreted in their world-view. The other two subunits have made effective use of bottom-up collaboration. The Landcare movement illustrates a crisis-oriented attempt to recreate a working landscape that will restore ecological integrity and promote the economic and social well-being of rural and semi-urban communities. Arnhem Land demonstrates collaborative initiatives that not only promote ecological integrity and beneficially support all users, but are based in the empowered stewardship of traditional peoples. It clearly models how a working landscape can become the physical embodiment of a culture, and vice-versa.

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