Abstract
Indigenous peoples globally are actively seeking better recognition of plants and animals that are of cultural significance, which encompass both species and ecological communities. Acknowledgement and collaborative management of culturally significant entities in biodiversity conservation improves environmental outcomes as well as the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people. The global diversity and complexity of Indigenous knowledge, values and obligations make achieving a universal approach to designating culturally significant entities highly unlikely. Instead, empowering local Indigenous-led governance structures with methods to identify place-based culturally significant entities will yield culturally supported results. Here we used a structured decision-making framework with objectives and biocultural measures developed by Indigenous experts, with the aim of prioritizing place-based culturally significant entities for collaborative management approaches on Bundjalung Country in coastal eastern Australia. We found some congruence and some important differences between culturally significant entities priorities and management compared with the colonial focus of threatened species management underpinned by current laws and policies. We provide reproduceable methods and a demonstration of successful local culturally significant entities designation and prioritization in an Australian context that highlights opportunities for Indigenous leadership, supported by governments in the designation and management of culturally significant entities.
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Data availability
Data/code available on request because of privacy/ethical restrictions as a data sharing agreement was central to the Indigenous partnership, with all data to be stored and managed by JAAC and the Bundjalung community.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to extend our gratitude and deep respects to Bundjalung Elders both past and present and the Bundjalung knowledge holders who participated in this study. This research is supported by Agilent PhD Scholarship in Science and Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.
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All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper. T.G.: conceptualization, methodology, fieldwork, Indigenous knowledge, interpreted and presented results, and wrote the manuscript. O.C.: conceptualization, methodology, fieldwork, Indigenous knowledge, and interpreted and presented results. Bundjalung workshop participants: fieldwork and Indigenous knowledge. A.S.: conceptualization, review and editing, and supervision. L.R.: conceptualization and methodology. B.A.W.: conceptualization, review and editing, and supervision.
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Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Emma Lee and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.
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This research is an Indigenous-led initiative, T.G. (Arabana) and O.C. (Bundjalung) as lead researchers would like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of the workshop participants; M.B., K.C., R.C., K.D., M.F., SI., M.K., T.K., A.M., G.T., J.T., S.T., K.W. and M.W. As Indigenous researchers, we are guided by our elders, knowledge holders and other Indigenous community members who have worked to improve the recognition of CSEs.
Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Structured decision-making framework employed in the identification and prioritization of Bundjalung-led Culturally Significant Entities adapted from32,34.
The steps are iterative, with feedback between each step to the community. The iterative steps three and four are the focus of this study.
Extended Data Fig. 2
Location of Bundjalung Country in North-Eastern New South Wales, Australia.
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Supplementary Tables 1–5, survey questions and Fig. 1.
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Goolmeer, T., Costello, O., Culturally Significant Entities workshop participants. et al. Indigenous-led designation and management of culturally significant species. Nat Ecol Evol 8, 1623–1631 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02466-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02466-w
