Central Land Council

Threatened Species

The CLC belongs to national recovery teams established by the Threatened Species Network (TSN) for six endangered species with extant populations occurring on Aboriginal land in the CLC region.

Endangered terrestrial vertebrates in the arid rangelands currently include the Northern Marsupial Mole, Greater Bilby, Ampurta, Greater Desert Skink, Central Rock-rat, Common Brush-tail Possum and Night Parrot. In collaboration with TSN and other agencies such as Parks Australia (North), Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Parks and Wildlife Commission (PWCNT), the CLC plays a fundamental role in informing traditional owners of their status and threats involved in each case.

The development and availability of local land management programs, like the Lajamanu and Warlpiri Rangers, is of increasing importance in the conservation effort, both in terms of community education and on-ground capacity for practical recovery efforts such as predator control.

Recently, the CLC was successful in attracting Commonwealth funds for a survey of notable species in the northern Tanami as an element of the Lajamanu Ranger IPA development project.

A marsupial mole, known to Anangu as itjaritjari. It lives in sand dune country, pretty much restricted in its occurrence these days to inland NT and WA where it occurs, patchily. There's one other related species (but probably others as yet undescribed) know as the northern marsupial mole, or kakarakatul to the Pintupi. This animal lives underground, is a carnivore, and has no eyes or even sockets.

This area is a stronghold for diminishing species such as the Grey Falcon, Greater Bilby, Mulgara, Great Desert Skink, Spectacled Hare-Wallaby and a number of poorly known taxa. The CLC also facilitated predator baiting around Bilby colonies in the Tanami Desert through collaboration of Desert Wildlife Services and the Warlpiri Rangers.

Central Australian indigenous interests and perspective's in the broader national dialogue on biodiversity continue to receive representation through the CLC in a number of ways.

Since its inception the CLC has retained membership of the Indigenous Advisory Committee set up under the Commonwealth Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The CLC was also represented in February 2002 at a national workshop into the adequacy of the Commonwealth's response to the implementation of Article 8(j) of the international Convention on Biological Diversity in respect to traditional ecological knowledge.