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Scientist gives his award to Aboriginal

By Rosslyn Beeby

24 July 2006 - Anger about government inflexibility and inaction on Aboriginal training programs has prompted a leading ANU scientist to donate a $30,000 national environmental prize to pay for an indigenous trainee fire ecologist at Jervis Bay to continue his education.

"Quite frankly, we're not doing enough - in fact we're doing bugger-all - to use the incredible environmental knowledge and skills of indigenous people in this country," Professor David Lindenmayer told The Canberra Times.

"Aboriginal people can make an important contribution to conservation and land management in this country. But they need more opportunities, more encouragement and the kind of training that's sympathetic to the cultural and family obligations they have within their communities.

"We need to recognise the pressures they're often up against, and give them the flexibility to deal with those situations."

Professor Lindenmayer said he had been "unable to budge" the federal Department of Transport and Regional Services - responsible for administering Jervis Bay in southern NSW as an Australian territory - to provide funding for trainee Darren Brown, of the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community, to keep working with an Australian Research Council-funded fire ecology project in Booderee National Park.

"He's doing brilliantly, but we were scratching around desperately to find funds to keep his position going." Earlier this month, Professor Lindenmayer was planning to use book royalties (he's published 13, has two in preparation and one due out later this year) to fund Mr Brown's work.

But at a black-tie ceremony in Melbourne on Saturday he was presented with a cheque for $30,000 as winner of the inaugural Daimler Chrysler Australian Environmental Research Award - established earlier this year to honour leadership in outstanding environmental research.

"It's was a timely win and there's no better use for it than to put the money into funding Darren's work," he said.

"He's been radio-tracking bandicoots and diamond pythons, looking at their home range and habitat use. It's great news that we can now afford to keep him going."

Professor Lindenmayer's research project at Jervis Bay is one of Australia's biggest fire ecology research programs, covering 110 sites and tracking the impact of wildfire and controlled burning on birds, mammals and reptiles in Booderee National Park.

But he received the Daimler Chrysler award for a 10-year research project at Buccleuch State Forest, a 50,000ha radiata pine plantation 100km west of Canberra. The research, which led to a revision of the codes of practice for establishing pine plantations in NSW and Victoria, looked at the impact of land clearing and habitat fragmentation on native wildlife.

Looking from an aeroplane window and casting a critical eye over the Buccleuch pines during a flight from Canberra to Melbourne, Professor Lindenmayer saw pockets of bushland - some only half a hectare, other as big as 200ha - had been spared by the bulldozers during clearing.

The exciting thing about these "islands in a sea of pines" was that they were remnants of nearby eucalypt forests extending through Kosciuszko and Brindabella National Parks, and provided an opportunity to compare wildlife populations in both remnant bush and continuous forest. A decade of research confirmed the importance of leaving patches of native bush - rather than clearfelling - to allow wildlife in pine plantations to find food, new territories and nesting sites.

Source: Journal of Turkish Weekly

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