Land management history

The Waanyi/ Garawa formalised their land management activity in 2005 when they held a land management planning meeting facilitated by the Northern Land Council's (NLC) Caring for Country Unit (CFCU) at Jilundarina (Siegel Creek). The meeting was funded from a grant secured by Bushfires NT and the NLC. The grant for "Fire Disaster Mitigation in Northern Territory Remote Locations and Communities Project" enabled Waanyi/ Garawa traditional owners to travel from Borroloola, Doomadgee, Mt Isa, and Tennant Creek to meet on country over a number of days to develop a land management plan for the land trust and set a 20 year vision for Waanyi/Garawa people.

At this meeting traditional owners established a long-term vision for community development and the sustainable management of their country. The primary aim of the Waanyi/Garawa people was to return permanently to country. There was great concern by traditional owners that a generation of young people had never been on country, they had not learnt about country, its songs, stories, sites of significance or its abundant resources and how to care for them. Along with the erosion of biodiversity from the hot late season fires, traditional owners were also witnessing the erosion of Waanyi/Garawa ecological knowledge as their connection to country was slowly being lost.

There was also great concern about the impact that fire was having not only on the land trust and its biodiversity, but also on neighbours whose pastoral stations were also being damaged by late hot season fires. It is impossible for traditional owners to manage fire on country when they were not living on it and have no resources to undertake fire management. Many of the late hot season fires originate in Queensland and pushed by wind move in a westerly direction across the un-peopled land trust and into the pastoral stations. Not only were these fires threatening biodiversity but they were also creating tensions between neighbours. One of the first aims of the Waanyi/Garawa people was to establish a fire break along the western border of the land trust to offer protection to neighbours from fire. This fire break was finished in August 2008.

At the land management planning meeting traditional owners established a formal land management program, the Waanyi/Garawa rangers.

In establishing the land management program Waanyi/Garawa traditional owners worked closely with the traditional owners of the Garawa ALT and the Northern Land Council's (NLC) Caring for Country Unit (CFCU) to secure grant funding. Initial funding was secured through a Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) grant, administered by the NLC CFCU, for a period of two years. This funding was to pay for a land management coordinator, operational costs and 'top-up' of the Community Development and Employment Program (CDEP) wages for fire management on the Garawa and Waanyi/Garawa ALTs. A senior Garawa man was appointed as the land management coordinator to get the program underway. A second NHT grant was secured in 2007. However, this grant was only for one year making it difficult to undertake longer-term planning for land management work on the Waanyi/Garawa ALT.

Recently, with the support of the NLC's CFCU, the Waanyi/Garawa rangers were successful in receiving funding from the Department of Environment, Heritage, Water and the Arts' (DEHWA) Working on Country (WoC) Program. This will mean that three Waanyi/Garawa rangers will now be employed full-time on a permanent basis to work on land management on the Waanyi/Garawa ALT.

Despite the success of the WoC program funding the Waanyi/Garawa rangers have no other funds, except the one year NHT fire grant and a small one-off threatened species grant, to undertake broader cultural and natural resource management work across their country. While these three positions are seen as a first step in formalising land management the vast size of the land trust and few resources available to traditional owners will mean very slow progress in managing the wild fires and other threats impacting on the region's biodiversity.