NESP MaC Project 3.9 - Establishing an Indigenous led approach to coordinated vertebrate pest management in northern Australia, 2023-2024 (NAILSMA)

This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub small-scale study - Project 3.9 - Establishing an Indigenous led approach to coordinated vertebrate pest management in northern Australia. For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata.

Wild livestock (particularly pigs, buffalo and cattle) are one of the primary threats to coastal ecosystem values in northern Australia. Wild livestock poses significant threats to cultural and livelihood values on Indigenous managed and owned lands and impact threatened species, water quality and other elements of biodiversity. Recent research has highlighted the importance of feral animal impacts on coastal wetlands and ecosystems that have implications for greenhouse gas accounts and other important national environmental assets such as mangrove restoration, coral reefs, marine turtle nesting and wetlands values.
Research is being done on feral animal impacts on several prominent and important values including carbon stocks, marine turtle depredation and sediment loads impacting coral reefs and seagrass. This research has direct relevance to regulated and voluntary carbon and biodiversity markets. The development of new carbon abatement and sequestration methodologies and associated biodiversity protection markets could lead to economic opportunities for Indigenous owned and managed assets in northern Australia. However, in the absence of Indigenous leadership in the research that underpins method development, there is a risk that the potential economic and social benefits of these new methods won’t be realised, will erode Indigenous rights and limit local participation in long term management and monitoring of threats.

This project will support the development of Indigenous led methods for feral animal management with the aim of establishing methods that account for the values and cultural boundaries that underpin activities on the Indigenous estate. We will do this research in partnership with Indigenous organisations that have long term feral animal management programs, developed with Traditional Owners and operating within the cultural and environmental boundaries of the homelands they manage.

Planned Outputs
• Map Indigenous land management tenure across northern Australia [spatial dataset]
• Final technical report with analysed data and a short summary of recommendations for policy makers of key findings [written]
• Research Paper [written]