With help from Terrains’ Habitat Incentives Project (HIP), the Djiru people are drafting an integrated natural resource management plan for two big blocks of land, which are home to the endangered cassowary and littoral rainforest, at Mission Beach.
In September 2011, the Djiru people, past and present, were recognised as the Native Title holders of their traditional lands in the Mission Beach area.
Woodslake is perhaps the most culturally significant site in the closer Burketown locality. Traditional owners once relied on this pristine freshwater ecosystem as their water, food, cultural and recreational source. Since then pressures and impacts from road construction, pastoralist activities and other forms of infrastructure have created major erosion and sediment control problems in and around the lake. The adverse impact to water quality and general loss of biodiversity over this time, as seen through the eyes of Gangalidda and Garawa Traditional Owners, has been alarming.
Social media is helping to harness the ancient oral history of indigenous people for contemporary audiences.
A series of short videos offering a rare insight into indigenous knowledge of country and ecology in central Queensland are now available on YouTube at www.youtube.com/fitzroybasin.
Fitzroy Basin Association Incorporated (FBA) developed the videos, which feature Traditional Owners talking about the cultural significance of different landscapes, and how different plants were used for practical purposes, food, and medicine, through funding from the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country program.
Video below: The Fitzroy River with Billy Mann
For the first time in the Condamine River catchment significant research has been undertaken to record and share Aboriginal language of the area.
The Condamine Alliance Languages Project is an initiative of Condamine Alliance through funding under the Australian Government’s Indigenous Language Support Program (formerly Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Records). The project aims to support language revival in communities along the Condamine River.
A new framework for managing knowledge and information related to land and water management in Queensland has been released. The framework outlines how natural resource management knowledge and information can be better managed and better exchanged.
Andrew Drysdale, CEO Queensland Regional NRM Groups Collective said the Framework will allow natural resource management groups and their partners to better manage knowledge and information.
