The Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area (Ngururrpa IPA), covering an area of in the far eastern area of the

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, sparsely populated regions of Western Australia, region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Indigenous Australians, Aboriginal people; wealth disparity; its ancient landscapes; the prevailing r ...

region, in the

Great Sandy Desert The Great Sandy Desert is an interim Australian bioregion,IBRA Version 6.1
data

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

, was declared in October 2020. It includes all of the land included in the Ngururrpa native title area, as determined in 2007.

Background

Peoples of the

Walmajarri The Walmadjari (Walmajarri) people, also known as Tjiwaling and Wanaseka, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Name The two names reflect different Walmadjari preferences. Their western bands accept ...

, Wangkatjunga, Ngarti and Kukatja language groups have called their country Ngururrpa, meaning "our country in the middle", and they are recognised as the

traditional owners Native title is the set of rights, recognised by Australian law, held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups or individuals to land that derive from their maintenance of their traditional laws and customs. These Aboriginal title rig ...

of the area; the IPA comprises the whole of the Ngururrpa native title determination made in 2007. The people lived a traditional lifestyle in the area until around the 1950s. Some elders remember seeing white people for the first time. They were left alone more than some of the surrounding groups, owing to the type of land offering poor

grazing In agriculture, grazing is a method of animal husbandry whereby domestic livestock are allowed outdoors to free range (roam around) and consume wild vegetations in order to feed conversion ratio, convert the otherwise indigestible (by human diges ...

for European livestock, and there are no mines in the area. This also means that today there are no mining or pastoral jobs, and few opportunities for job creation in the area. The formation of the IPA has created jobs as

rangers A ranger is typically someone in a law enforcement or military/paramilitary role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called "ranging" or "scouting". The term most often refers to: * Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with prot ...

. A ceremony was held in May 2021 to celebrate the designation of the land as an IPA, at the same spot where native title was officially proclaimed.

Location and landscape

The of land lies in the far eastern area of the Pilbara region, in the Great Sandy Desert. The nearest community is Balgo. There are no permanent residents in the area, which includes a few outstations, only accessible by

four-wheel-drive A four-wheel drive, also called 4×4 ("four by four") or 4WD, is a two-axled vehicle drivetrain capable of providing torque to all of its wheels simultaneously. It may be full-time or on-demand, and is typically linked via a transfer case provi ...

vehicles. The land includes vast sandplains and dunefields as well as

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...

s and

mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...

ephemeral lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from t ...

claypan Claypan is a dense, compact, slowly permeable layer in the subsoil. It has a much higher clay content than the overlying material, from which it is separated by a sharply defined boundary. The dense structure restricts root growth and water infiltra ...

s and seasonal

swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

s. Increased

cultural burning Cultural burning is the process of using prescribed burns to manage landscapes, a process used primarily by Indigenous peoples; more specifically the Indigenous people of Australia and the Western parts of North America have been found to use this ...

practices are expected to improve the environment for its flora and fauna.

Flora and fauna

The sandy plains support some shrubby varieties of

acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as wattles or acacias, is a genus of about of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa, South America, and Austral ...

and spinifex, while

Acacia hilliana ''Acacia hilliana'', commonly known as Hill's tabletop wattle but also known as sandhill wattle and Hilltop wattle, is a shrub belonging to the genus ''Acacia'' and the subgenus ''Juliflorae''. It is native to northern Australia. The Indigenous ...

is found on

lateritic Laterite is a soil type rich in iron and aluminium and is commonly considered to have formed in hot and wet tropical areas. Nearly all laterites are of rusty-red coloration, because of high iron oxide content. They develop by intensive and prolo ...

areas.

Bush tucker Bush tucker, also called bush food, is any food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but it can also describe any native flora, fauna, or fungi used for culinary or medicinal ...

includes the bush potato.

Threatened species A threatened species is any species (including animals, plants and fungi) which is vulnerable to extinction in the near future. Species that are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of ''critical depensatio ...

of fauna include the bilby ('' Macrotis lagotis''), great desert skink (''Egernia kintorei''),

marsupial mole Marsupial moles, the Notoryctidae family, are two species of highly specialized marsupial mammals that are found in the Australian interior. They are small burrowing marsupials that anatomically converge on fossorial placental mammals, such as ...

(''Notoryctes sp.'') and brush-tailed mulgara. The

critically endangered An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...

species, the

night parrot The night parrot (''Pezoporus occidentalis'') is a small parrot endemic to the continent of Australia. It has also been known as porcupine parrot, nocturnal ground parakeet, midnight cockatoo, solitaire, spinifex parrot and night parakeet. It i ...

, also inhabits the area.

Heritage

Some of the earliest evidence of human occupation on the continent exists in Ngururrpa. The ancient creeks flowing eastwards into the swamps provide for good hunting and

foraging Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavi ...

, and there were plentiful sources of wood for shelter and tools.

Rock engraving A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions o ...

s estimated at around 12,000 years exist within the IPA. Ngururrpa rangers continue to use

Tjukurrpa The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal mythology. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his ...

to care for country. The creation of the IPA ensures that sufficient funding is provided to protect both the cultural and environmental heritage of the area.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Map of the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area
Indigenous Protected Areas of Western Australia Protected areas established in 2020 2020 establishments in Australia