Oscar Jones, Macquarie University

Yirralka Ranger Brendan Wunuŋmurra and Oscar Jones weighing coarse woody debris on Gurrumuru ninydjiya (Credit: Darren Waŋambi, Yirralka Rangers).

The Gurrumuru ninydjiya (floodplain) holds significant value to Yolŋu Wäŋa Wataŋu (Traditional Owners) for its natural resources and ancestral spiritual connection. Unfortunately, its environmental and cultural values are at risk, as a result of gatabaŋa (Water buffalo, Bubalus Bubalis) and bikibiki (Feral pig, Sus scrofa), as well as salt water intrusion (SWI). These threats are impacting vegetation communities such as paperbark forests, as well as bush foods such as corms of the räkay (water chestnut, Eleocharis dulcis). For our study, we conducted rrambaŋi djäma (together work) with community members and Yolŋu Yirralka Rangers of Laynhapuy IPA to understand how these threats were impacting above ground carbon and räkay after excluding feral ungulates for five years to see whether or not there was an interacting effect between SWI and feral ungulates. 

Throughout the course of the study, we worked closely with Gurrumuru community members and the Yirralka Rangers, measuring, collecting and processing all above-ground carbon pools on Gurrumuru ninydjiya. Through this collaborative process, community members and rangers were interviewed to better understand the cultural values, the Yolŋu names for resident plants and animals, and why we must protect them, whilst the University researchers shared knowledge about how biomass and carbon are measured on the ninydjiya. 

Miyalk (Women) collecting räkay in the lower fenced plots on Gurrumuru ninydjiya (Credit: Oscar Jones, Macquarie University).

Collecting räkay is miyalk djäma. Miyalk from Gurrumuru community helped collect räkay corms in the lower fenced and unfenced zones. Many of the older miyalk revealed that they had not been collecting for many decades, and for the middle aged and younger women, this was their first time. This project aims to not only study the carbon and bush food values of feral ungulate exclusion, but also aid in the maintenance of cultural collection practices.

Oscar Jones was awarded the 2022 Applied Forest Ecology Scholarship.

Team: Oscar Jones¹, Lanydjana Munuŋgurr2, the Yirrkala Rangers2, Emilie Ens¹, Kirstie Fryirs¹ and Lindsay Hutley3

¹ School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, NSW

2 Yirralka Rangers, Laynhapuy Indigenous Protected Area, NT 

3 Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, NT

This piece has been extracted from an online gallery of images from Indigenous ecological practitioners around Australia. Images in this collection tell the stories of programs continuing, reviving and protecting the ecological practices and knowledge held by First Nations people for millennia – consult the full gallery here.