1. Towards more strategic management of weeds on Top End Aboriginal Lands

By Mark Gardener, Published by Tropical Savannas CRC

2. Not from here: Plant invasions on Aboriginal lands

By Nick Smith, Published by Tropical Savannas CRC

One of the key issues facing managers of Aboriginal land is the spread of weeds. Since the late 1990s collaborative projects between community ranger groups, the Northern Territory Government, the Northern Land Council and the Indigenous Land Corporation have resulted in many successful weed management outcomes.

Over the last 10 years the Aboriginal ranger movement has gained huge momentum, with more than 300 participants currently in the Top End of the Northern Territory.

A review of the weed problem was published by the Tropical Savannas CRC in 2001 Not from here: Plant invasions of Top End Aboriginal Land, by Nick Smith.

Towards more strategic management of weeds on Top End Aboriginal Lands by Mark Gardener in 2005, uses two large, long-running, multi-agency projects as a case study to assesses how well these projects achieved the dual objectives of slowing the spread of weeds on Aboriginal land (particularly the wetland weed Mimosa pigra ) and building community capacity in weed management.

1. Towards more strategic management of weeds on Top End Aboriginal Lands

The report identify priority issues concerning more strategic weed management, building community capacity, communication and coordination and resource needs.

This report is principally aimed to inform policy makers, current and potential partners for weed management on Aboriginal Land. However, it was concluded that weed management can not be viewed alone as it has many links to other social, environmental and economic benefits for Aboriginal community.

The report discusses the need to expand support for the Aboriginal ranger movement by building a far-reaching network including current Natural Resource Management partners, Aboriginal enterprises, a Whole-of-Government approach and potential industry partners.

Order a hard copy or you can download a PDF of this report at right. You can also download a photo history and case studies from the report separately.

2. Not from here: Plant invasions of Top End Aboriginal Land

This report by Nick Smith looks at the weed-management issues faced by Aboriginal communities in the Top End of the NT. The report covers legislative requirements for weed control; the orgins of the weeds; future collection, storage and mapping; weed management issues for each catchment on the Top End; training; awareness and collaborative approaches.

One of the main findings of the report was that there is an urgent need to build weed management capacity in local communities. The report is the outcome of the TS–CRC Project coordinated by Michael Storrs from the Northern Land Council's Caring for Country Unit. Nick Smith was supported by the Centre for Indigenous Natural and Cultural Resource Management at Charles Darwin University.

Order a hard copy or download it chapter by chapter as PDFs below.