Instead of shutting down remote indigenous communities, government should be supporting them so they can care for Australia's precious landscapes, a conservationist says.
Dr Barry Traill, director of the Pew Charitable Trust's Outback to Oceans program, says outback Australia is less inhabited now than it was 50,000 years ago. It needs more rangers and caretakers committed to the land rather than driving residents towards cities.
The vast landscape covering Australia's centre, north and west is actually made up of a range of ecosystems, from the arid central deserts to the tropical savannahs of the top end.
"The landscape co-evolved with human management, particularly around fire," Dr Traill told AAP on Thursday from the Australian Rangelands conference in Alice Springs at which he was a keynote speaker.
"When you take people out of the landscape fire management changes; in some places there can be more fires and in other places less; the plants and animals are adapted to having certain types of fire patterns... and many decline (when they change)."
Human management is also necessary to deal with introduced weeds and feral animals wreaking havoc across the landscape, such as donkeys, buffalo, pigs, cats and toads, he said.
Government policy is too focused on coastal areas and policies for the outback are often "poor, inconsistent, and not delivering for people on the ground".
"It would be a poor policy choice, if it was ever implemented, to remove support for remote indigenous communities," he said of Western Australia's recent announcement that it could not afford to provide essential services to up to 150 remote communities.
He believes Australia needs a network of healthy communities to care for the land on behalf of the entire population.
"It's our heartland ... It's part of being Australian," Dr Traill said.
"The concept that a community is not viable simply because it's in the great sandy desert, regardless of any other discussion about culture and functionality and how people want to be there (is wrong)."
Share
