The 13th annual Indigenous Ecological Knowledge symposium was held today as part of the joint ESA-SCBO conference. The session showcased Indigenous peoples’ biocultural knowledge, research and projects and the central role that they play in managing healthy, long term ecosystems. 

Indigenous peoples represent less than five per cent of the global population but manage about 40 per cent of intact tropical primary forests. These lands cover some of the most remote and biodiverse regions on Earth. 

“The re-recognition of the unique values of Indigenous biocultural knowledge and practice is occurring and increasingly being deployed alongside Western approaches in what has been described as cross-cultural, two-way or right-way work” said Dr Emilie Ens from Macquarie University. 

This recognition is reflected in the Bush Heritage Australia Right Way Science Prize, which was established in 2019 and is awarded each year at the ESA conference. The winners of the 2020 prize, Dr Michelle McKemey and the Banbai Rangers, today presented an update of the results of their ten-year collaboration.

Their research found that cultural burning results in lower mortality of mature black grevillea, Grevillea scortechinii, a threatened species endemic to NSW and Queensland. Where wildfires kill most mature shrubs, cultural fires preserve a multi-aged population. The study also found that cultural burning has a lower impact on echidna, an important Banbai totem species. 

“Cultural fire management protects important cultural values, such as rock art, from bushfires,” said Banbai Elder and ranger Aunty Lesley Patterson. 

“Bushfires impact on our cultural practices by limiting practice to important areas, damaging bush tucker and cultural materials and drawing effort away to bushfire recovery,” she said. 

“They can also burn the ecosystems underground, including the seedlings and larvae. We need to do it properly without damaging everything.”

As a result of their pioneering work, the Banbai Indigneous Protected Area was the first in NSW and just the second in the whole of Australia.

Nonetheless, Dr Emilie Ens cautioned that “much more work needs to be done to increase Indigenous participation and control in Australian ecology and environmental management.”

Participants available for interview – contact Grace Heathcote; Ecological Society of Australia on 0404 542 523 or