Indigenous land and sea management network launched

Indigenous rangers from Australia are visiting Canada to help launch a global network of indigenous land and sea managers.

They say the development reflects a growing international demand for their knowledge to deal with environmental problems.

Daniel Oades is one of three indigenous rangers to visit the first nations chiefs in Canada to exchange knowledge on land management.

"Working with my mob, the Bardi Jawi on the Dampier Peninsula, we've utilised a lot of the traditional knowledge that was around hunting of dugong and we actually turned that around into using it for the knowledge of where the species would be at that time of year to satellite tag those animals," he told SBS.

"We were then able to transfer our knowledge to the United Arab Emirates Environment Department and traditional owners over there and successfully tagged four dugong internationally."

Melissa George, chair of the federal government's Indigenous Environment Committee, says Indigenous land management knowledge is now being applied to modern day problems like carbon emission reduction.

"There's been well a huge project happening in the north course of an event burning project and essentially it's been working Indigenous communities to change the time of year that they generally burn. So from hot or dry season fires to slow-burning fires in different parts of the year."

The exchange has been organised in partnership with the Pew Environment Group and forms the first stage in the launch of a global network for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Land and Sea Managers.

Australia has led the initiative and recruited Brazil, Norway and New Zealand at the Rio+20 sustainable development conference in Brazil earlier this year.