Restoring cultural plant communities at sacred water sites

ABSTRACT

Water places have been critical to central Australian Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. However, many waterhole communities have been degraded by factors including invasion by large feral herbivores and non-native plants. We document the restoration of two waterholes near Santa Teresa (Ltyentye Apurte), with a focus on culturally significant plants. We described plant communities around waterholes in 2007, before fences were erected to exclude large feral animals, and again in 2018. Plant cover and diversity were higher after fencing and the occurrence of culturally significant plants greatly increased. However, invasive buffel grass was the dominant ground cover after fencing and will require active suppression to allow culturally significant native plants to proliferate. Traditional Owners identified excellent opportunities to achieve restoration through educating young people, with a focus on sharing intergenerational knowledge and engaging local Indigenous rangers in management, enabling them to meet the traditional obligations to care for country.

KEYWORDS:

• Waterhole
• arrernte
• traditional knowledge
• buffel grass
• feral animal

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Hayes and Salt springs and thank them for allowing us to work at these important places. We would like to thank the Ltyentye Apurte rangers and their coordinator, Johanna Shand, for their involvement in this project and for their work at the springs. We would like to thank Meg Mooney and Fiona Webb of Tangentyere Council for facilitating trips and activities with the Ltyentye Apurte Catholic School in Santa Teresa, and for the enthusiastic participation of both teachers and students of the school. We thank Will Higgisson and Brooke Parr for their help with plant identification, and Paul Collis, Wayne Appleton and Peter Raddoll for support and useful discussions. We would also like to thank Central Land Council for their support in obtaining permits, and their additional help in all aspects of the project.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded through a University of Canberra Collaborative Indigenous Research Initiative (UC CIRI) grant.