Ten Commitments Revisited: Securing Australia's Future Environment

PART 1

ECOSYSTEMS

1

Deserts

Steve Morton

Introduction

The Australian deserts lie beyond the fences. They are the lands that proved too tough for European settlement, too poor to support the cattle and sheep that elsewhere have transformed our perception of the country from desert into rangeland. If the rangelands are the outback (Chapter 2), the deserts are the far outback.

Some of this terrain possesses names familiar to many Australians, such as the Simpson Desert. Other areas may not be so widely known – the Gibson, Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Tanami Deserts. The deserts comprise 2 million km² of sand. Sometimes the sand is swept into ridges, whereas elsewhere there is flat sandplain. Occasional rocky outcrops sometimes shed enough water after rain to create small creeks, and a few rivers penetrate from outside, but they all peter out. Three ecological features stand out: there is very little surface water; the leached sands are among the least fertile soils of our continent; and yet the country is covered with a wealth of plant life. The harsh physical background leads to a tiny human population. Of the 350 000 residents of inland Australia, only ∼40 000 live in the deserts. The few non-Indigenous people fly in and out of mining camps. Most residents are Aboriginal people who live on their traditional lands on scattered settlements, often far out into the country. The land is not ‘empty’: it is Aboriginal land.

Infertility and lack of water have resulted in the deserts being only marginally affected by European-style land uses and, hence, by the environmental changes experienced elsewhere in Australia. There is no commercial grazing and no land clearing, yet there is rising mining activity and tourism. There are ecological challenges from fire, weeds and feral animals, and the future risks of climate change. As a result of all these factors, the potential exists for some of the last great natural spaces on the face of the planet to be managed in association with one of the oldest human cultures.

Things tend to develop by fits and starts in the deserts, in sympathy with the cycles of rain and the stasis of drought. So it is that the following ten issues are similar to those listed in the First Edition of the book, even if each is modified in detail. The most significant modifications are continued development of Aboriginal authority and influence, the search for more effective modes of governance and service delivery to these remotest parts of the country, growth in the mining industry, and big efforts in management of fire and pests.

Key issues

1. Australian society recognises the primacy of Indigenous interests

Two aspects of Indigenous interests are relevant here. First, ownership of most of the deserts by Indigenous people is a reality through various titles, and remaining areas of Crown Land may be expected to come under native title. Australia has legally recognised what our Indigenous compatriots have long argued: that their custodianship of these lands is vested in them through the Jukurrpa. The Jukurrpa (from Anmatyerre, with equivalents in other languages) is the body of knowledge and beliefs about creation of country, and the moral code or law for desert Indigenous people. Consequently, any natural resource management must start from the premise that Indigenous views are vitally significant (see also Chapter 22).

Second, Indigenous people are the principal long-term residents. Although estimates are not easily matched to the definitions of the deserts used herein, the resident population of remote Australia is nearly 50% Indigenous (Biddle 2012): a proportion that will go on increasing. Indigenous people want to live on their country – in the deserts – to a far greater degree than other Australians. Consequently, they comprise the obvious workforce not only for activities that are readily made culturally meaningful to them (such as natural resource management) but also more broadly (for example, in mining) (Altman 2012; Langton 2013). In short, future policy for natural resource management simply must recognise the primacy of Indigenous interests.

2. Create new means of regional governance to replace the present fragmented and spasmodic policies and programs

The deserts are far distant from the daily concerns of most Australians, 85% of whom live within 50 km of the coast. In common with the rest of remote Australia (the rangelands), the deserts are in the backyards of state and territory jurisdictions. They suffer from lack of representation in the centres of decision making and, consequently, the imposition of fragmented and spasmodic policies and programs in economic development, administration and service delivery (Chapter 2). At their most extreme, these conditions lead to drastic reactions at national level, such as the Northern Territory National Emergency Response of 2007 (also referred to as ‘the intervention’), and its successor, the Stronger Futures policy (Commonwealth of Australia 2013). However, the matter is not solely an ‘Aboriginal issue’: it is a result of ineffective governance across all communities (Walker et al. 2012). The desert parts of Australia need consistent, regionally specific and customised governance, policies and programs to replace the present dysfunctional fragmentation. Because of the importance of governmental support for many of the challenges mentioned in this chapter, the matter is fundamental to progress in natural resource management.

3. Further develop Indigenous programs to achieve natural resource benefits and integration with Aboriginal cultural life

Indigenous people bring invaluable traditional ecological knowledge to natural resource management, being well equipped through their skills, commitment and location to undertake such work, because it is of value in their eyes. If it can be linked effectively with wider cultural interests, then it is even more rewarding (Hill et al. 2013). Furthermore, policies that develop deep Indigenous engagement in natural resource management may be powerfully synergistic (Davies et al. 2011). Multiple benefits can accrue: in health and wellbeing (for example, lowered levels of diabetes and heart disease); in social terms (reduced anti-social behaviour); economically (reduced welfare payments, increased access to employment and increased tax revenues); and, of course, environmentally (lower rates of weeds and feral animals, healthier fire regimes and carbon sequestration). Significant hurdles remain to be overcome, yet when cultural connections are strong then tensions between Indigenous objectives and broader national goals for natural resource management may be more readily resolved.

The Australian Government’s programs for Indigenous Protected Areas and Working on Country are apt responses to these opportunities. There are 60 declared Indigenous Protected Areas in Australia, covering over 48 million ha. Some 12 or so have been declared in the deserts, comprising an extraordinary 31 million ha (DSEWPaC 2013). Further, under the Working on Country Program (begun in 2007), 95 ranger teams across Australia have come into being. These employ more than 680 Indigenous rangers, and about a quarter of the groups are located in the deserts. The groups undertake management of cultural sites, fire, biodiversity, feral animals, weeds and land disturbance (DSEWPaC 2013). These are steps in the right direction.

A major reason for the successes of these initiatives has been their long-term, patient nature. Nevertheless, further refinement is required. First, it would be sensible to focus on measurable goals for environmental benefit under both programs, and monitoring of effectiveness in achieving them, because transparent responsibility and accountability are required of any investment of public funds. Second, constraints due to organisational and individual capacity are still to be overcome in most places throughout the deserts. Indigenous organisations face challenges in reconciling cross-cultural misconceptions, and many remain fragile in governance, administration and infrastructure. The history of socio-economic and educational disadvantage exacerbates these problems because many issues compromise Indigenous people’s access to the education that would enhance their abilities to participate more widely in natural resource management (Hill et al. 2013; Langton 2013). Building broader education constitutes as big a set of challenges as ever.

4. Further engage resource companies in achieving sustainability

Mining is the most economically significant industry of the deserts, and should have a powerful role in their future management. Many companies are striving to boost Indigenous employment, in line with the needs of issues 1 and 3 above (e.g. Rio Tinto 2008). Most companies now undertake environmental restoration or offsets. Discussion will be ongoing about the environmental and social roles and responsibilities of extractive industries. Meanwhile, examples of innovative practice continue to grow.

‘Arid Recovery’ is a partnership at Roxby Downs between BHP Billiton (the operator of the Olympic Dam mine), the local community, the South Australian Government and the University of Adelaide. Arid Recovery aims to ensure that mining activity has a net positive impact on regional biodiversity assets (Arid Recovery 2013). It combines on-ground management with scientific research and monitoring (Kilpatrick et al. 2011) to produce significant conservation benefits for several small- and medium-sized mammals classified as threatened. Arid Recovery features a reserve of 123 km² with predator-exclusion fencing, supplemented by broader scale control of feral animals and ecosystem regeneration. Several regionally extinct mammals, including the greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) and the burrowing bettong (Bettongia lesueur), have been re-introduced into the reserve following feral animal control.

Such initiatives deserve support and emulation, not only in the deserts but more broadly. Given that resource extraction will continue to occur and mining companies will be involved in the deserts for the long term, it is important to consider the arrangements that might best encourage growth in further, similar endeavours. The public interest in conservation would be well served by companies and policy makers continuing to discuss aspects of legal and administrative arrangements that hinder or stimulate environmental investments. The objective should be to ensure that policies expedite continued expansion of such efforts.

5. Develop reliable, meaningful and cheap measures of biodiversity and ecosystem health for a vast landscape

The effectiveness of natural resource management in any region of Australia must be measurable. This imperative requires special attention in the deserts, where people and resources are dramatically fewer per unit area. Biodiversity science has not served policy well because, in general, it has so far failed to provide for reliable, meaningful and cheap measurement at appropriate scales (see also Chapter 26). Eyre et al. (2011) suggested a hierarchy of complementary monitoring components using combinations of direct and indirect measures. Policy makers should continue to pressure the scientific community to develop applicable tools, because most of the key issues mentioned herein require effective adaptive management if beneficial impacts are to be achieved, and limited progress has been made with monitoring since the First Edition of this book.

6. Find new approaches to the challenges posed by feral animals

The ‘big four’ among feral animals in the deserts are camels (Camelus dromedarius), rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and cats (Felis catus). Growth in the camel population of the deserts towards a million or more, and doubling about every 8 years, led to a control program beginning in 2007. The aim of the program was to reduce camel numbers to a level that reverses the current population trajectory. Cost-effectiveness analysis showed that, although the present costs of control are considerable, they are far outweighed by the benefits to the livestock industry from reduced competition and to society as a whole through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and damage to infrastructure (Drucker et al. 2010). Given the large positive value of control, there appears to be a strong argument for implementation of a full-scale, long-term control program, targeted at locations where benefits are most likely to be achieved. The work with camels also incorporated Aboriginal understanding in developing strategies to manage negative impacts – an essential feature of future efforts with feral animals in the deserts (Vaarzon-Morel and Edwards 2012).

Because it is almost certainly impossible to eradicate any of the ‘big four’ ferals, we have to work out how to live with them. In future, therefore, it may be useful to extend and apply the approaches used in the camel program more broadly. Because of the vastness of the deserts, it is imperative to choose wisely among many potential efforts to control feral animals, because decisions about managing them constitute a problem of allocating limited resources. Managers need to know how to decide what ferals to manage, what actions to use to manage them, where in the landscape to do so, and when. Any decision-making framework must incorporate multiple competing priorities, imperfect knowledge and limitation in resources. Structured decision making is one such framework for deciding between actions (Carwardine et al. 2012). It helps improve understanding of complex problems by defining alternative options, typically involving several groups of decision makers. The latter point is significant, as Indigenous involvement in choices is fundamental to ensuring that their preferences inform the options. In short, processes that give rise to rigorous decisions are vital.

7. Find new approaches to the challenges posed by weeds

Deserts are relatively free of weeds – the challenge is to keep it that way. Only a small number of Weeds of National Significance are present in small patches, namely Jerusalem thorn (Parkinsonia aculeate), athel pine (Tamarix aphylla) and Prosopis spp. (mesquite). The most widespread invasive plant, buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris), is not declared on any weed list because of its commercial value for pastoral production. Buffel grass is a ‘transformer’ species, changing the ecosystems into which it invades by altering the fire regime. It continues to spread into disturbed habitats in the deserts and to cause conservation concern.

New approaches are required in two ways. First, pro-activity in national effort to stamp out new nodes of infestation could be highly effective. This requires good communication between national bodies and the Indigenous ranger groups that are at the frontline of much natural resource management. For example, the Tjuwanpa rangers of central Australia contribute to control of Tamarix. Second, as with feral animals the social dimension of weed management must be taken into account, in order to target effort geographically and so avoid tensions between different viewpoints (Friedel et al. 2011).

8. Choose natural assets to be targeted for fire management

Fire is a major force in the deserts because spinifex, a flammable grass, flourishes universally on the infertile sands. Spinifex re-grows over several years following a fire in response to subsequent rainfall. Indigenous people traditionally used fire to clear the spinifex to encourage the growth of food plants, but their movement into settlements has resulted in a shift from smaller scale fires towards wildfires (Burrows et al. 2006). Although Aboriginal people now have tenure over large parts of the landscape, their lifestyles have changed, and most now live in settlements. Currently, the deserts are dominated by uncontrolled fires that sweep across the country after the periods of heavy rain that produce high fuel loads.

It has become something of an article of faith that all of the big fires currently dominating are bad because they are bringing about long-term change in vegetation and are causing decline in biodiversity. However, two matters remain unresolved. In the first place, the dearth of information on complex interactions among vegetation type, climate and fire means that the degree of risk to biodiversity from large wildfires has not generally been quantified (Nano et al. 2012). Second, even if risk is indeed shown to be high, it is not clear that the current management goals of reducing wildfire can be achieved at the broad scale, due to practical and financial constraints. In a vast landscape, and with thinly spread resources, choices must be made about priority natural assets for management. Hence, regional management strategies for fire should be developed to identify priorities within each region (Edwards et al. 2008). This process would need to foster cross-cultural understanding in identification of places for protection. Finally, there needs to be an injection of funds to prevent widespread fires after periods of above-average rainfall. A funding model that overcomes the limitations of the annual budget cycle would need to be developed for this purpose, as reflected in issue 2 above.

9. Explore opportunities in carbon farming

Carbon pricing potentially allows landholders to generate revenue. The large areas and abundance of vegetation in the deserts would seem to offer opportunities. But there is a need for research to refine opportunities in a carbon market for sequestration and greenhouse gas abatement from desert landscapes. Again, Aboriginal involvement is necessary in preparing for this possibility. Methodologies for carbon accounting are being considered (see Aboriginal Carbon Fund 2013). There are considerable risks in such initiatives in the uncertain and wildfire-prone environments of the deserts, yet it is imperative to continue exploring the potential.

10. Choose water assets to be targeted for management

It might at first seem odd to mention water while discussing deserts. It is true that surface water is sparse indeed within the great swathes of spinifex and mulga that make up this part of Australia – but its very rarity causes it to be precious. Furthermore, when it rains heavily, water drains into floodouts, basins and palaeo-drainage systems, often persisting for months. The presence of the water itself, plus the fact that soils are often more fertile in such places, means that they act as magnet for camels and, sometimes, horses too (the fertile soils also tend to support persistent rabbit populations). Tourists are also drawn to them. As a consequence, these scattered and often isolated water assets are vulnerable to degradation or destruction. The primary need is careful, focused processes for prioritising management investments. The information base on natural waters is presently inadequate to answer most questions of management importance, and so research and surveys are required. Nevertheless, priorities for action can be set even under such conditions of inadequate knowledge, in common with issue 6 above.

Conclusion

The Australian deserts constitute one of the last great naturally vegetated spaces on the face of the planet, and simultaneously are home to one of the oldest human cultures. This combination of features presents our nation with an opportunity to husband and to benefit from that resource. With intelligence and commitment, careful policy, modest financial resources and focused effort the region could be managed effectively into the future.

References

Aboriginal Carbon Fund (2013) Aboriginal Carbon Fund, <http://aboriginalcarbonfund.com.au/>.

Altman J (2012) People on country as alternative development. In: People on Country, Vital Landscapes, Indigenous Futures. (Eds J Altman and S Kerins) pp. 1–22. Federation Press, Sydney.

Arid Recovery (2013) Arid Recovery, <http://www.aridrecovery.org.au>.

Biddle N (2012) Population and age structure. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Indigenous Population Project 2011 Census Papers 5, 1–23.

Burrows ND, Burbidge AA, Fuller PJ, Behn G (2006) Evidence of altered fire regimes in the Western Desert region of Australia. Conservation Science Western Australia 5, 272–284.

Carwardine J, O’Connor T, Legge S, Mackey B, Possingham HP, Martin TG (2012) Prioritizing threat management for biodiversity conservation. Conservation Letters 5, 196–204.

Commonwealth of Australia (2013) Policy and programs: stronger futures measures. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, <http://www.indigenous.gov.au/stronger-futures/policy-programs/>.

Davies J, Campbell D, Campbell M, Douglas J, Hueneke H, LaFlamme M, et al. (2011) Attention to four key principles can promote health outcomes from desert Aboriginal land management. The Rangeland Journal 33, 417–431.

Drucker AG, Edwards GP, Saalfeld WK (2010) Economics of camel control in central Australia. The Rangeland Journal 32, 117–127.

DSWEPaC (2013) Indigenous Protected Areas; and Working on Country. Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Australian Government, Canberra.

Edwards GP, Allan GE, Brock C, Duguid A, Gabrys K, Vaarzon-Morel P (2008) Fire and its management in central Australia. The Rangeland Journal 30, 109–121.

Eyre TJ, Fisher A, Hunt LP, Kutt AS (2011) Measure it to better manage it: a biodiversity monitoring framework for the Australian rangelands. The Rangeland Journal 33, 239–253.

Friedel MH, Grice AC, Marshall NA, van Klinken RD (2011) Reducing contention amongst organisations dealing with commercially valuable but invasive plants: the case of buffel grass. Environmental Science & Policy 14, 1205–1218.

Hill R, Pert PL, Davies J, Robinson CJ, Walsh F, Falco-Mammone F (2013) Indigenous Land Management in Australia: Extent, Scope, Diversity, Barriers and Success Factors. CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Cairns.

Kilpatrick AD, Warren-Smith SC, Read JL, Lewis MM, Ostendorf B (2011) Cross-fence comparisons: theory for spatially comprehensive, controlled variable assessment of treatment effects in managed landscapes. Ecological Informatics 6, 170–176.

Langton M (2013) The Quiet Revolution: Indigenous People and the Resources Boom. ABC Books, Sydney.

Nano CEM, Clarke PJ, Pavey CR (2012) Fire regimes in arid hummock grasslands and Acacia shrublands. In: Flammable Australia: Fire Regimes, Biodiversity and Ecosystems in a Changing World. (Eds RA Bradstock, AM Gill and JE Williams) pp. 195–214. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

Rio Tinto (2008) Indigenous Employment in Australia. Rio Tinto, Melbourne.

Vaarzon-Morel P, Edwards G (2012) Incorporating Aboriginal people’s perceptions of introduced animals in resource management: insights from the feral camel project. Ecological Management & Restoration 13, 65–71.

Walker BW, Porter M, Marsh I (2012) Fixing the Hole in Australia’s Heartland: How Government Needs to Work in Remote Australia. Desert Knowledge Australia, Alice Springs.

2

Rangelands

Mark Stafford Smith

Introduction

Conventionally, ‘rangelands’ were the outback grazing lands of Australia. They comprise over 50% of the continent’s land area between the core deserts and the marginal agricultural lands, overlapping with the tropical savannas in the north and extending to the Great Australian Bight in the south. This chapter focuses on this area, but, as people find new values in these lands (Holmes 1997), they have come to incorporate a variety of values beyond grazing, tourism, mining, conservation, Aboriginal, defence and localised horticulture values. The rangeland economy is dominated by mining and, a distant second, tourism, but livestock grazing is still by far the main use by area. Except where these uses are creating pockets of patchy population, mainly for mining and tourism, their non-Aboriginal population component is declining at the same time as the Aboriginal component is increasing (Brown et al. 2008).

Management of weeds, feral animals, fire, carbon stocks and natural values, as well as support for mining and tourism, all mean that occupation of the rangelands is in the national interest. Further, since some people want to live there, including significant numbers of Aborigines, it may be much cheaper to support them to stay and carry out the services required by the nation rather than to fly in people from outside. In many regions, there is a major shift in focus occurring from grazing to multiple land use, carbon farming and the maintenance of the environmental and cultural heritage on which the majority of the comparative advantages of rangelands rest (Hunt 2003; McGregor and James 2011). Since the first edition of this book, these trends have intensified, with more attention being paid to carbon farming, a significant increase in declared Indigenous Protected Areas, and another round of attention being paid to the potential to settle Northern Australia. These trends inform many of the following key issues.

Key issues

1. Protect and manage water-remote areas, especially in the more densely settled pastoral areas

In the grazed rangelands, the most precious remaining parts of the landscape for biodiversity are patches that happen to be a long way away from artificial water points, especially when they are in vegetation types preferred by livestock. These are key repositories of flora and fauna that are sensitive to grazing (Landsberg et al. 2003). With increasing numbers of artificial waters, such areas are rapidly disappearing (James et al. 1999). Urgent action is needed to protect the remaining water-remote areas from development and to manage the impact of feral animals and weeds. This action should be undertaken in the context of a regional plan (Morton et al. 1995; James et al. 2000) with some form of stewardship that engages the landholder in looking after the protected areas where these are embedded in a pastoral enterprise (Biograze 2000).

2. Create large-scale meta-reserves to protect diffuse evolutionary processes

Australia’s rangelands are among the last semi-arid areas in the world where selective forces such as rain and fire still operate over large areas in a spatially patchy and temporally variable mode in otherwise relatively homogeneous vegetation, driving ‘diffuse evolutionary processes’ (Stafford Smith and Ash 2006). Aside from their intrinsic conservation worth to Australia, being able to observe the continued outcomes of these evolutionary forces may be significant to understanding evolutionary processes within species. Priority should therefore be given to maintaining the spatial and temporal heterogeneity in these selective forces over sizeable regions of similar vegetation (this will be compatible with many other land uses, so the areas might be described as ‘meta-reserves’). This means maintaining the continuity of the vegetation and allowing the natural fire regimes to continue. This management goal should be adopted in the key extensive vegetation types, since changing fire regimes and the impacts of grazing are otherwise homogenising some of the effects of selection. Appropriate areas of spinifex grasslands and dunefields are probably already accidentally (un)managed to this end, but this should be made deliberate. However, no such extensive area of Mitchell grass or chenopod shrublands is protected and this should be rectified urgently. (Mulga woodlands may also require similar action.) The (still tenuous) development of major conservation corridors such as the proposed Trans-Australia Eco-Link (e.g. http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/naturelinks/Corridors/Trans-Australia_Eco-Link) could deliver these meta-reserves if progressed and properly resourced.

3. Ban any further flow controls on arid river systems

The rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin are now recognised as unique. The Basin contains the last uncontrolled arid river system in the world, and the most temporally variable stream flows in any large catchment globally (McMahon et al. 2008). This variability is known to create and sustain massive resource flushes that support unique populations of biota, including huge waterbird populations (Roshier et al. 2001; Chapter 11). There is clear evidence in other basins that the effect of reducing the variability of water flows through river extractions and other controls is to rapidly destroy the ability of a river system to support this rich biota (Kingsford et al. 2004); there is also increasing evidence that variable flows maintain native biota (e.g. Costelloe et al. 2010; Arthington and Balcombe 2011). Given the degradation of the Murray–Darling in this regard, arid rivers in general, and those of the Lake Eyre Basin in particular, probably represent the last large-scale support for much of this unique biota. Since the only formal way to prove this might destroy these river systems, under the precautionary principle, no further major flow controls or extractions on any arid rivers should now be permitted. Further, the burden of proof for small uses such as stock waters needs to fall on the user to show that they will not cause harm, rather than on society to show that they will.

4. Resource a truly national rangelands-monitoring scheme, encompassing biodiversity and other land values properly

‘What you don’t measure you don’t manage.’ There have been major, if tortuous, advances towards national integration of rangelands pastoral monitoring information in the past decade, resulting in the Australian Rangelands Collaborative Information System (ACRIS 2008; for updates, see http://www.environment.gov.au/land/rangelands/acris/index.html). The complexity of this achievement has arisen from trying to draw out common threads from state-based systems, which were implemented independently, with different levels of sophistication and for different purposes. Despite these advances, it is acknowledged that ACRIS is barely adequate in its greatest area of strength – monitoring the drivers and outputs of ecosystem services of importance to pastoral production. It is even weaker in monitoring other ecosystem services, such as biodiversity, water resources and landscape values, and has almost no capacity in relation to measures of social and cultural capital, such as the rapid destruction of linguistic cultural heritage (AIATSIS/FATSIL 2005). The progressive picture of linguistic and cultural extinction is observed as poorly as that of species decline and loss of ecosystem services. At the same time, there is a diminishing will on the part of many state governments to continue with their biophysical monitoring programs, let alone diversify them into other required areas.

There are other monitoring efforts that are not integrated into this effort, such as developing schemes under the Lake Eyre Basin Intergovernmental Agreement (http://www.lebmf.gov.au/index.html), and extensive monitoring under other programs such as health, education and indicators of Aboriginal disadvantage (SCRGSP 2011). In most sectors, it is recognised that there is national value in having a consolidated picture with regional resolution of the state of rangelands for planning and reporting, as well as providing context for policy and programs in specific regions (Bastin et al. 2009). All of these should be unified into a single capital accounting system for outback Australia, which monitors indicators of health for the environmental, social, human, cultural, institutional and built capital of the rangelands. The system could be appropriately modular and multi-scaled, but allow analysis of inter-sectoral causal relationships, such as whether changing land values cause degradation, or better functioning institutions result in improved biodiversity outcomes. These indicators should be developed around the key ecosystem, cultural and social services ultimately delivered by rangelands, including biodiversity as an initial high priority for better measurement.

Such a monitoring system will help to indicate where intervention is needed but also to demonstrate the environmental credibility of rangeland management for marketing in the future, and to back up carbon sequestration budgets.

5. Establish a regionally integrated system of tourism and conservation management

There is a curious reluctance in Australia to recognise that the management of many major conservation parks is hugely distracted by coping with tourism (Tremblay 2008; Chapter 19). This is coupled with an out-of-date perception of parks as wilderness, untrammelled by human impact. One of the implications of this attitude is a widespread failure to plan parks at a regional scale, integrated with other land uses including tourism (Tremblay 2008; Chapter 21. Conservation objectives of the reserve system would be better served by embracing and zoning human activity in areas being managed at least partially for conservation, and by levying far more realistic fees from those enjoying these areas to pay for conservation. By taking on a regional approach to development and conservation, with better evaluation measures that are acted upon, governments and industry could greatly improve their regional resource allocation decisions to the benefit of all (Tremblay 2008) and deliver new livelihoods (Carson and Carson 2011). Last, while pastoral management can draw on numerous best-practice management manuals, there are no such guides for integrated approaches to rangeland conservation (Stafford Smith and McAllister 2008), and research, conservation and industry bodies need to develop these collaboratively.

6. Resource local (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) stewardship of public natural and cultural heritage values as proper jobs with well-defined goals

Across the rangelands (as for all of outback Australia), there are environmental and cultural values that require management despite the current trends of declining (or increasingly patchy) human population. Fire, invasive species, endangered species, carbon stocks and water all require management; the presence of people carrying out this management also contributes to national priorities of security, safety and sustainability. Some management can be provided by fly-in-fly-out rangers and environmental teams, but this is expensive compared with seeking the services of people who actually want to live there, and does not deliver the ancillary national security and safety benefits. As an example, the Dhimurru Indigenous Protected Area with its ranger program in the Top End has been estimated to cost about A$1.40/ha, compared with the cost of managing Kakadu National Park at A$8.90/ha (P. Whitehead pers. comm. 2001), with economies of scope (Campbell 2011). Similarly, stewardship salaries paid to pastoralists in western New South Wales to carry out conservation management in a trial program were estimated to cost A$2–4/ha compared to typical costs of managing that region’s parks of about A$20/ha. These comparisons are not perfect, since park management may result in more general conservation outcomes than the two stewardship programs, but they make a powerful point about efficiency. Further, it appears that such management could be highly valued (Zander and Garnett 2011), and there has indeed been excellent progress in expanding the Indigenous Protected Area network from 2000 to today (see http://www.environment.gov.au/indigenous/ipa/map.html), along with support for related Indigenous rangers.

Nonetheless, the concepts of ‘stewardship’ and ‘stewardship payments’ are still devalued by their diverse and loose use in policy. There is an urgent need to refine this usage (or find a better term) to apply to tasks that have a well-defined public benefit – possibly linked to private benefits that are also assessable – and that have clear procedures for defining a contractual arrangement between government (representing the national or regional public interests) and individuals or communities, for outcomes that are mostly hard to measure. This is already possible in many arenas, but also requires continued research effort to clarify the holistic costs and benefits more transparently, noting that some of these deliver ancillary benefits in very different sectors (e.g. linked health, cultural and natural resource management benefits from Indigenous work on-country: Campbell 2011).

7. Replace all drought-related subsidies and tax provisions for grazing with incentives supporting ecological responses to climate variability

Grazing will continue as the extensive land use in many areas of the rangelands for the foreseeable future, albeit concentrating in ‘core pastoral’ regions (Holmes 1997, 2010). At present, these enterprises are recipients of a string of policy instruments related to drought or climate variability, many of which are universal to agriculture with specific effects in rangelands. These include provisions for livestock valuation, drought de-stocking provisions (‘livestock elections’), ‘income averaging’ provisions, farm management deposits, accelerated depreciation provisions for various infrastructure, as well as the whole cluster of state and national subsidies and support triggered by ‘exceptional circumstances’. There is now abundant evidence (backed up by the strategic views of many producers themselves) that most of these instruments create perverse incentives such that the public purse ends up providing incentives to pastoralists to damage their own resource base and then pays relief for the impact that this has on their enterprises (e.g. Drought Policy Review Task Force 1990; Stafford Smith 2003; Nelson et al. 2008).

The short-sightedness of paying support on the basis of events that are likely to dramatically increase in frequency with climate change in the next few decades (Hennessy et al. 2008) also demands a rapid overhaul of the system. However, despite another round of drought policy review (Productivity Commission 2009) coming to much the same conclusions as the 1990 review, which led to a pilot trial of a much better approach in Western Australia (http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/drought/drought-program-reform/drought-pilot), the latest policy still includes the need for a complex Exceptional Circumstances declaration process, and various distortionary tax instruments are still current.

Thus, there is a strong case for phasing out all drought-related provisions as quickly as possible with the exception of farm management deposits, which may enable financial reserves to be built in a non-distortionary way (Stafford Smith 2003). If some sort of support is required to handle extreme events, and particularly to assist industry transformation, as suggested by Nelson et al. (2008), this should comprise resources placed into the hands of regional groups to develop locally relevant drought preparedness activities compatible with the maintenance of biodiversity and other public objectives (see issue 9). This could include the establishment of agistment support systems that facilitate modern-day nomadic herding (McAllister 2012), as well as other management in tune with our variable landscapes (Stafford Smith and McAllister 2008).

8. Define a new concept of multiple-use rangelands and have its implications flow through all institutions

In regions that are not ‘core pastoral’ zones (Holmes 1997), land use is turning increasingly to ‘pluri-active’ diversification (Holmes 2010), with ownership by mining companies and Aboriginal interests, involvement in conservation and tourism, and many other multiple uses becoming more important than conventional commercial grazing (e.g. van Etten 2013). Given these changes, the continued focus on grazing as the primary land use in most states is creating barriers to a more ecologically, socially and economically sustainable future for outback land managers. A new concept of multiple-use rangelands needs to be developed and enshrined in tenure systems and other aspects of state legislation, and supported by changes to government agencies. Tenure legislation needs to be revised to allow multiple use, but with overriding obligations to the maintenance of natural and cultural heritage. Thought should be given to reorganising state and territory departments to combine all rangelands developmental activities related to all land uses and values in one department, preferably independent of other regions’ issues in those states where rangelands constitute a large enough proportion of the landscape to warrant this; regulatory roles should stay separate. The next issue is closely related to this one.

9. Establish formal regional learning systems that develop persistent community local knowledge

Rangelands function at levels of spatial and temporal scale that are beyond those of individual managers (Stafford Smith et al. 2007). Their management therefore requires a regional system of learning that links land managers with policy and research in ways that ensure the persistence of local knowledge beyond the experiences of individual managing lifetimes, and takes advantage of cross-cultural learning (van Kerkhoff and Lebel 2006; Stafford Smith et al. 2007). There are specific needs for this in terms of developing community-owned approaches to safe carrying capacities and drought alerts for the pastoral industry (McKeon et al. 2004). However, there is a wider issue of developing contextually relevant, local- to regional-scale governance of natural resources that are common property. Although the appropriate balance of interests in a region will depend on its balance of land uses and is likely to evolve into the future (Holmes 1997), roundtable discussions are needed on Indigenous–grazing–conservation–mining–tourism management at regional scales with a view to formal peer group oversight at property scales. The current development of integrated natural resource management groups is a useful step in this direction, but undermined by the lack of devolution of true decision-making rights (Marshall and Stafford Smith 2010). A wider remit for regional governance of natural (and eventually other) resources will provide significant economies of scope to allow for smaller and more locally relevant regions in the long term; this could also promote the necessary retention of human capital in the regions.

10. Establish an Outback Capital Trust with powers to set and receive natural resource use rents, modelled on the Alaska Permanent Fund

It would not be flippant to say that the single best action for the rangelands would be to dissolve the state boundaries and enable remote Australia to be treated as a single entity, rather than the low priority backyard of five states and a territory (e.g. Walker et al. 2012). This would provide it with a more coherent voice and ability to seek consolidated funding. Because this is not realistic in the near term, it is time nonetheless to take seriously the proposal to establish a rangelands-wide body. Various options for a ‘rangelands commission’ have been touted in the past, but an effective body needs to be able to raise its own funding so that it becomes independent of fluctuating central government attentiveness. The rangelands have been a source of wealth to the nation for the past century and a half, principally through mining and grazing exports, and through cheap labour obtained from Aboriginal people in earlier years, and in tourism today (see Stafford Smith and Cribb 2009). This export of natural and social capital has only been very partially compensated by return flows of financial capital from national beneficiaries. The status of the rangelands’ environmental, social and human capital has therefore been greatly run down.

The past cannot now be re-visited, but this situation can be corrected for the future by establishing an Outback Capital Trust, through collaborative state, territory and federal legislation, modelled on the Alaska Permanent Fund (Stafford Smith and Cribb 2009), a very different approach to examples such as the current Western Australian ‘Royalties for Regions’ program. This would have the power to levy rents on all uses of natural resources in rangelands, and the trustees would obey a charter to invest the financial capital from those levies to the best effect in environmental, social, human and physical infrastructure of the rangelands. The trust beneficiaries would be defined as all inhabitants of the rangelands. A variety of natural resource management, conservation, Aboriginal and social – but also communications and transport – projects would be funded by the Trust. (In parallel with this effort to rectify the under-investment in rangelands capital, the proposals by Dillon and Westbury (2007) to amend the Grants Commissions processes would help to rectify the leakage of recurrent government spending from the rangelands.)

Conclusion

The issues outlined in this chapter are not all of the same scale. Responding to issue 10 would eventually resource all the other changes. In the meantime, the others are worth doing for their own benefits. They are, in turn, the mixed responsibility of community, industry, government and researchers.

For the dominant land user of the rangelands – the pastoral industry – the long-term need is to address issues 8 and 9, to see a real change in the approach to grazing in the rangelands. This change will vary by region according to its productivity, but would see a major move towards multiple land use values and stewardship, and a future inhabitant who is by nature a rangelands manager, not simply a grazier. This will take time, and in the meantime tackling issues 6 and 7 could hasten progress in this direction.

Issues 1–5 involve more immediate and specific actions that will help to ensure that the eventual transition to sustainable management can occur on landscapes that are still worth conserving. The investment required is quite small and will be matched by private inputs to the benefit of an extraordinary area – half of our continent. The changes will help drive a transition towards a more Australian view of living in Australia.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Ian Watson and Margaret Friedel for thoughtful review of the original version of this chapter. The opinions expressed are my own.

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