An alliance between the Australian Institute of Marine Science and Indigenous ranger groups across northern Australia is formalising a two-way exchange of knowledge to help safeguard sea Country as climate pressures intensify.
The Northern Australian Marine Monitoring Alliance (NAMMA) brings together Traditional Owners, Indigenous rangers and sea Country managers with AIMS scientists to combine traditional ecological knowledge with contemporary monitoring techniques. Founding members — the Bardi Jawi and Oorany Rangers in the Kimberley, the Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers on Groote Eylandt, and representatives of the Kemer Kemer Meriam Nation in eastern Torres Strait — met AIMS staff in Townsville recently for their first face-to-face gathering, including a workshop on Yunbenun (Magnetic Island).
The partners also launched a new NAMMA website featuring co-designed monitoring tools, training modules aligned to Certificate III packages, operational manuals and reporting dashboards, enabling communities to record, analyse and share results from their own monitoring programmes.
Bardi Jawi ranger Azton Howard said: “Since we began working with AIMS, we have been collecting data on our fish stocks and corals. We send it off to the AIMS crew, they analyse our data and then we bring the information back to our community, to our schools to teach the young ones, and to our Elders to make sure they’re informed. We can use the data to help us manage Country.”
On Groote Eylandt, the collaboration has included BRUVS — Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations — and habitat mapping with AIMS researchers. Bruce Mountford from the Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers said: “Talking to other rangers and people from different parts of northern Australia about what’s going on is awesome. I’ve learnt a bunch of stuff just listening to people talk about coral bleaching and what they have discovered by using BRUVS (Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations).”
Uncle Kapua Gutchen (AKA KG) from Darnley Island (Erub) in the Kemer Kemer Meriam Nation said: “We are teaching children our traditional knowledge but that alone won’t help us make the situation improve or come better in our country. We need the western science to marry up with ours so we can come up with plans that help our work.”
AIMS scientists Dr Martial Depczynski, Dr Kathy Cure and Libby Evans-Illidge have worked with the ranger groups since 2018 to develop culturally relevant monitoring frameworks that integrate traditional knowledge and western science. Dr Depczynski said the partnership between Indigenous rangers and scientists was a natural fit. “Both Traditional Owners and AIMS share complementary environmental stewardship responsibilities and obligations towards looking after sea Country,” he said.
“Now that the strong network of Indigenous ranger communities around Australia is being established, an important next challenge is to put into motion bespoke tailored monitoring partnerships that address training, capacity building, joint monitoring and community reporting on the state of the environment. We are taking an important step towards this goal with NAMMA.”
Dr Cure said NAMMA is rolling out joint tools and frameworks that treat both knowledge systems as equally important. “Unfortunately, while sea Country is often remote and well managed by Traditional Owners and rangers, it is not immune from the impacts of climate change and other disturbances,” she said.
“Just recently the Bardi Jawi and Oorany rangers recorded an extensive coral bleaching event on their sea Country. The data they collected will be joined with long-term monitoring data to provide community with a clearer understanding of coral bleaching impacts.
“Having the rangers on Country keeping an eye on reefs and having the option to quickly respond to bleaching events, reinforces their value as sentinels looking after local marine life and helping inform local management decisions with data collection.”
The Bardi Jawi Rangers are managed and supported by the Kimberley Land Council, and the Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers by the Anindilyakwa Land Council. More information about NAMMA and its training resources is available at namma.au.
