BURDEKIN DRY TROPICS NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PLAN 2016-2026
26 culturally defined, and articulates strategies that support Traditional Owners to develop their capacity to undertake NRM actions on country.
A number of Traditional Owner groups also have local land and sea management plans, which identify the values, issues and actions for NRM on their country. The TOMG identified capacity building in NRM activities as a priority for Indigenous people to improve personal, community and country health and wellbeing.
Rural land managers and communities
Over 97.4 per cent of our region is rural and used for agriculture, and a large proportion of this occurs in remote areas, however only 24.8 per cent of the region’ s population is identified as rural population( Queensland Government Statistician’ s Office, 2015b)( Office of Economic and Statistical Research Qld Treasury and Trade, 2012). Rural landholders are key on-ground sustainable land managers and have an understanding and strong emotional connection with the land. They have a crucial role to play in improving the condition of natural resources on their land, while improving long-term productivity and profitability.
Aboriginal Peoples’ connection to land Aboriginal People are the ancestors of the original population of their geographical country( Australia). Their understanding of land and water is the living cultural knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation. This forms a rich and significant matrix of people, totemic, social, economic and spiritual connectedness with country. The connectedness extends from the past, and shapes both present and future land and natural resource management.
Queensland Museum website( www. qm. qld. gov. au)
Rural landholders and communities continue to face many challenges, including:
• remoteness and isolation;
• decreasing and ageing rural populations;
• attracting, retaining and managing the cost of labour;
• cost of education and fixed costs;
• relatively low quality and reliability of infrastructure( including digital) and services;
• low local enterprise diversity;
• poor access to equity for building a sustainable practice;
• world market shifts;
• changing government priorities; and
• high climate variability.
Research based on measures of resource-dependency and adaptive capacity, found that across the Monsoonal North area, social resilience is low, particularly for graziers( Marshall, et al., 2015). Social resilience is defined as“ the ability of
Figure 3- Traditional Owner Groups
PEOPLE CONNECTIONS