Cooperative relationships with Indigenous communities

Building healthy communities

One of the key challenges is how to develop an economic basis for protecting
nature; to find activities that promote the protection of nature rather than its
destruction. 

For intact land, the challenge is how to develop compatible economic activities
that keep environmental disturbance to a minimum.

In fragmented land, the challenge is how to find economic mechanisms to make
it viable to restore vast areas of country. For example, planting deep-rooted trees
and shrubs over hundreds of thousands of hectares to control salinity and produce
water and biodiversity benefits.

Cooperative relationships with local and Indigenous communities, land-holders,
governments, scientists, and other conservation groups, are vital to WildCountry's
success. Indigenous and rural communities are the main custodians of vast areas
of Australia. A key aim of the program is to work with these communities to ensure
an economic future that is ecologically positive.

Australia's Indigenous people, and their own vision of the future, are crucial to
WildCountry. The WildCountry vision supports the return of traditional lands to
their Indigenous custodians, plus the support of Indigenous conservation strategies.
We must learn from Indigenous ecological knowledge and skills in nature management.

WildCountry aims to develop sustainable economies that are compatible with
nature; alternative economies that are not dependent on damaging the
environment and which benefit Indigenous and rural communities.