CELEBRATING IMPACT IN THE KIMBERLEY OVER FOUR YEARS

This year we celebrated four years of impact in the Kimberley, thanks to a grant from Lotterywest supporting our Innovation and Equity Program that promotes Indigenous rangers’ conservation leadership in the Kimberley.

The grant has allowed us all to continue vital work to protect threatened and culturally significant species including, the nabarlek, golden bandicoot, Gouldian finch, wiliji, spectacled hare-wallaby and northern quoll.

The program envisioned maintaining the Kimberley as a stronghold for natural and cultural values. The main goals focused on innovative management of key threats to natural and cultural resources at a landscape scale, as identified by Traditional Owners. This included large, intense wildfire, invasive species, habitat degradation and other challenges in conserving the Kimberley. The work also included capacity-building activities among ranger groups and the development of the Indigenous Women’s Rangers Environmental Network (WREN) for the Kimberley.

This work was collaboratively delivered through supporting ranger team operations in the Dampierland and North Kimberley bio-regions.

Over this time our achievements included:

• Supporting eight different Indigenous ranger groups across six partners to protect culturally important species and places, and lead conservation management projects on their Country.
• Supporting 40 Indigenous rangers and Traditional Owners participation in fire management activities that conserve high conservation value habitat. Part of this included increasing early dry season burns across most program areas.
• Monitoring and management of at least 15 threatened species.
• Expanding the Women Ranger's Environmental Network to 476 rangers to care for Country.
• Supporting Indigenous rangers and Traditional Owners to acquire new skills in threatened species management and opportunities for career development and diversification.