Project Leader: Mr Peter Cooke, Northern Land Council,
Darwin
Project 4.3.2 (2)
Summary | Aims | Progress | Future directions
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The Upper Daly Land Trust area is an area of about 3500 km
2 adjoining the Daly River Reserve in the west. For a
variety of reasons, the traditional owners have not yet been able
to re-establish permanent settlement in the area since it was
returned as part of a land claim. Without people living in the
area, a number of land-management problems have developed including
wildfires in the absence of traditional burning regimes, increasing
populations of feral animals, and increasing illegal access and
poaching.
The Wagiman people now want to plan management over a much
larger area of land than before. The newly regained land in the
Trust has many of the same management problems as the rest of the
land in the Trust. Emerging and continuing issues include trespass,
resource use without permission, a lack of proper fire management
and weed issues, especially along the banks of the Daly River.
The project aimed to assist traditional owners in addressing
these problems. It began with a series of surveys and assessments
of the land. In keeping with the overall collaborative theme of the
TS-CRC-funded Aboriginal land-management projects, the process of
land assessment and planning will proceed on a collaborative basis,
involving government and non-government agencies with traditional
owners to bring together western scientific knowledge and the
landowners traditional ecological knowledge.
Difficulty in appointing an appropriate consultant resulted in
delays to fieldwork. The principal landowners involved in the
project were also focused on a land claim and it was decided that
attempting to go ahead with the project would interfere with the
claim.
Dominic Taylor-Hunt, an experienced participatory planner at the
NLC's Caring for Country Unit, took over responsibility for the
project in September 1999. Mr Taylor-Hunt provided training in
participatory planning for other NLC staff members including the
Caring for Country Women's Land Management Officer and two members
of the Darwin/Daly NLC regional office. These three staff are now
also involved in the planning team for the Upper Daly project.
A major planning workshop over five days was conducted at Pine
Creek in February 2000 by the NLC and Wagiman landowners. A draft
planning booklet documenting the workshop and reporting back to
participants is well advanced for in-house production at the
NLC.
Recent discussions focused on enabling people to get back on
their country, generate income and undertake land management. The
ideas that were given the most value were (in order of popularity)
farming, caring for country, tourism, stock work and 'other work'.
All of these topics are only in the initial stages of discussion,
and their feasibility has yet to be assessed.
A key issue in this project remains the difficulty that the
Wagiman have in re-establishing themselves on traditional lands.
Considerable planning also is needed to establish the feasibility
of the various land use options. More negotiation is needed with
CDEP and ATSIC. Sub-project meetings will continue, as well as
field trips to map and survey country and the education of young
people in traditional knowledge.
A report entitled 'Participatory Planning in Australian
Aboriginal Land management: Lessons from the Upper Daly Land
management project' was produced by the project in March 2001. It
will be circulated within the Wagiman community.
