In the far North-West of Australia, Nyikina Mangala Traditional Owners are partnering with The Nature Conservancy on a range of exciting projects. One of the things we're doing, is improving our community's capacity in planning and decision-making, thus helping Traditional Owners to fulfil our cultural obligation to look after country.
The Nyikina Mangala community participated with other Kimberley Traditional Owner groups in a week-long Healthy Country Planning workshop in Derby. Moving forward, workshop participants will now apply their newly learned skills in the Nyikina Mangala Healthy Country Planning project over the coming months.
Building on key components of the Healthy Country Plan, The Nature Conservancy is also working with Walalakoo Aboriginal Corporation on a "Development by Design" Project. This project will help our community analyse implications of development projects and will help us to make informed decisions around natural and cultural land-use trade-offs, that balance social, cultural and economic benefits.
At the end of the collaboration, our people will have developed a Healthy Country Plan to guide our land management decisions and will have tools available to balance trade-offs and help optimise overall benefits of development projects.