Saving Species

Across the Australian landscape, native animals are facing pressure on their survival like never before. In urban areas, the pressure of development has seen local extinctions become widespread. It is the remote areas of Australia – much of which is Aboriginal land – that still provides opportunities to bring marsupial, reptile, amphibian and bird species back from the brink of extinction.

Over 70 per cent of Indigenous Ranger groups carry out dedicated threatened species activities.

These activities include biodiversity surveys and environmental monitoring and combine traditional tracking skills with modern science to detect ecosystem dynamics.

Species conservation successes as a result of Indigenous land and sea management have occurred around the country.

An example is the use of motion cameras by a number of ranger groups. These have provided new and important information about threatened species distributions. The results of surveys demonstrated the recovery of species including black-footed rock-wallaby and central rock-rat.