Extending across ten deserts, these globally significant arid lands are home to an exceptional diversity of animals and plants including over 80 threatened plants and animals (such as bilbies and rock wallabies). The area also has immense cultural value largely as a result of 50,000 years of continuous occupation by Indigenous people. Despite being relatively intact, these unique desert ecosystems and the values they contain are under increasing threat due to inadequate resources for land management activities, invasive exotic weeds and introduced pests, changed fire regimes, climate change and the movement off country over the past 150 years of the lands’ traditional custodians.
The 10 Deserts Project, led by the Indigenous Desert Alliance, aims to build the capacity of Indigenous groups to look after country for a range of economic, social, cultural and environmental outcomes.
The project integrates contemporary natural resource management best-practice with traditional cultural and ecological knowledge and establish systems and approaches, including long-term financing and market enabling strategies that will build environmental resilience across the desert landscape.
Collaborative land management
The 10 Deserts Project is the largest connected network of protected areas in the world with 173 areas recognised as a part of the National Reserve System and the largest network of Indigenous-managed lands in the world with a total of 21 Indigenous Protected Areas.
The project provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate collective action to build environmental resilience at an unprecedented scale worldwide, led by Indigenous organisations with the support of external stakeholders. Strategic collaborations and coordinated responses to key threats will be transformational in assisting Indigenous organisations to develop new and creative responses to challenges of low capacity and landscape scale management.
Strategies, activities and outcomes
The 10 Deserts Project strategy wheel shows how each of the project activities are interconnected and lead into each other.
The project strategies are listed and colour coded on the left hand side:
- building the capacity of indigenous people (blue)
- managing key threats (orange)
- creating sustainable jobs and income (green)
- collaboration and connectivity (light grey)
The colours of the strategies are reflected in the wheel colour of the project activities. The light grey background represents the overarching strategy of collaboration and connectivity across the deserts.
The project activities include:
- fire management
- supporting ranger teams
- learning, sharing and exchange
- Indigenous cultural & ecological knowledge
- regional tourism
- carbon & co-benefits
- climate change
- buffel free GVD
- feral camel management
At the heart of the wheel are the key project goals: healthy people, healthy country, strong voice for the desert.
At the base are all of our project partner logos – they are the foundation of the project.
Steering Committee
Peter Murray
Chair (Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation)
Michael Haynes
Deputy Chair (Alinytjara Wiluṟara Landscape Board)
Nyaparu Rose
Nyangumarta Warrarn Aboriginal Corporation
Lynette Wildridge
Nyangumarta Warrarn Aboriginal Corporation
Josephine Grant
Central Land Council
Andrew Minyardie
Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa
Mima Smart
Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board
Jamie Brown
Paruku Rangers (KLC)
Peter Murray
Chair (Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation)
Peter Murray was elected Chair to the 10 Deserts Project steering committee in November 2020. He is the current Chief Executive Officer of Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation based in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia, and in this capacity, he manages the Warlu Jilajaa Jumu Indigenous Protect Area and the Ngurrara working on-country ranger programs.
He is a Walmajarri / Juwariny on Ngurrara A, a native title area in the Great Sandy Desert. One of his goals is to assist communities to build capacity to function in a remote and isolated area.
Peter works with rangers to achieve their mission to look after country and his group is currently working on monitoring climate change and formulating adaptation strategies to reduce negative impacts on his country and people. He works closely with the senior elders to pass on knowledge to young people while inspiring others to become leaders and role models within his community.
Michael Haynes
Deputy Chair (Alinytjara Wiluṟara Landscape Board)
Michael Haynes was appointed to the Alinytjara Wilurara NRM Board (now Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board) in 2013 and has been presiding member since February 2019. Michael is a descendant of Kokatha and Mirning tribes and currently resides in Ceduna.
Michael represents the Far West Coast areas on the Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board. He has a solid history of governance roles including acting deputy state manager and Ceduna regional manager of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission between 1986 and 1997. Mr Haynes retired in late 2017 as the eco of Ceduna Aboriginal Corporation, where he reported to an all Aboriginal board.
Nyaparu Rose
Nyangumarta Warrarn Aboriginal Corporation
Nyaparu (Margaret) Rose is a Nyangumarta elder who works closely with the Nyangumarta Ranger group, based out of Bidyadanga.
She is passionate about the importance of connection to country and was instrumental in the Nyangumarta Wararrn Aboriginal Corporation achieving Indigenous Protection Area status for 28,420 km2 of land which now employs 17 rangers and 14 elders.
Nyaparu is a key member of the 10 Deserts Project steering committee and has provided support and advice to the team since the project’s commencement.
Lynette Wildridge
Nyangumarta Warrarn Aboriginal Corporation
Lynette Wilridge is a Nyangumarta woman who resides in Bidyadanga, Western Australia. She has been employed as a ranger since 2014 and currently is the senior ranger with the Nyangumarta Ranger program.
Prior to her involvement in the ranger program, Lynette was employed by the Bidyadanga La Grange Community School as a teaching assistant. Lynette has held directors positions with the Nyangumarta Warrarn Aboriginal Corporation, the PBC for Nyangumarta Country, and also the Nyangumarta Karajarri Aboriginal Corporation which is the PBC for Yawinya Shared Country around Walyarta Conservation Reserve.
Lynette is passionate about caring for her culture and Country and mentoring and inspiring young traditional owners to do the same.
Josephine Grant
Central Land Council
Josephine grew up in the Tennant Creek region and speaks Warlmanpa and Warrumungu. Since becoming a ranger with the Central Land Council (CLC) Murru-Warinyi Ankkul group in Tennant Creek in 2012, she has progressed to the position of a program-wide support officer and is the first Indigenous woman to be employed as ranger group coordinator within the CLC program.
Josephine is a role model for other rangers within the CLC groups and communities across the Northern Territory that she works with. She is on the indigenous subcommittee of the Commonwealth’s bilby recovery team, the first such indigenous advisory committee at a national level.
Andrew Minyardie
Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa
Andrew is a traditional owner of the Martu native title determination spanning 13.6 million hectares. The determination includes parts of the Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Gibson Deserts, collectively referred to as the Western Desert.
Andrew is the deputy chair of the 10 Deserts Project steering committee (stepping down as the projects inaugural chair in November 202o). He has held positions on the Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa board for the past seven years. He has been involved in the development of the highly successful and respected Martu leadership program which targets young men and women.
Mima Smart
Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board
Mima Smart has been a long-time member of the Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board (AWLB), and now represents the Yalata Community on the Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board.
A senior member of the Yalata, Oak Valley, and Maralinga communities, Mima is well-known and highly respected throughout the Alinytjara Wilurara region.
She is committed to forging strong Aboriginal community engagement in caring for country and has shown this determination repeatedly through her involvement in engineering ground level regional natural resource management work.
As a member of the AW boards Mima significantly raised the profile of Aboriginal issues, and tirelessly dedicated herself to developing employment and training opportunities for Anangu (people) within local communities.
In 2005, Mima received the NAIDOC South Australian Person of the Year Award and in 2012, an Order of Australia for service to the Indigenous community in South Australia. She has been the chair of the Yalata Community Council, member of Maralinga Tjarutja Council, and has volunteered for several government agencies, including Families South Australia and the Indigenous Coordination Centre in Ceduna.
Jamie Brown
Paruku Rangers (KLC)
Jamie Brown is the Paruku ranger team coordinator. Jamie’s is based at Lake Gregory – Paruku – in the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.
The Paruku rangers are leaders in the conservation and protection of threatened species such as the night parrot and the greater bilby.
The team works across an area of more than 25,000 square kilometres, including the Tjurabalan Native Title area and the greater Paruku region. They are supported in their work by the Tjurabalan Native Title Lands Aboriginal Corporation, the Kimberley Land Council, and the KLC’s Kimberley Ranger Network – an alliance of Indigenous ranger teams across the region.