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, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...

region, in the

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

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

, was declared in October 2020. It includes all of the land included in the

Ngururrpa The Ngurrara and Ngururrpa are overlapping groupings of Aboriginal Australian peoples of the Great Sandy Desert, in the central Pilbara and southern Kimberley regions of Western Australia. Both groups are represented by various Aboriginal corpo ...

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 The Ngardi, also spelled Ngarti, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Name and grouping Arthur Capell took the term ''Ngardi'' to refer, not to a distinct tribe, but to a branch of the Warlpiri, a ...

and Kukatja language groups have called their country

, meaning "our country in the middle", and they are recognised as the

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...

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 roam around and consume wild vegetations in order to convert the otherwise indigestible (by human gut) cellulose within grass and other ...

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 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 Four-wheel drive, also called 4×4 ("four by four") or 4WD, refers to 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 ...

vehicles. The land includes vast

sandplain A sandplain is an area where the soil is sand deposited from elsewhere by processes such as wind or ocean, rather than direct weathering of bedrock. Sandplains are quite flat. There may be dune systems, and given time and the right conditions the ...

s 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 arise ...

s and

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

ephemeral lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

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 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 the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus na ...

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 both a soil and a rock 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 ...

areas.

Bush tucker Bush tucker, also called bush food, is any food native to Australia and used as sustenance by Indigenous Australians, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but it can also describe any native flora or fauna used for culinary or ...

includes the bush potato.

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

of fauna include the bilby (''

Macrotis lagotis The greater bilby (''Macrotis lagotis''), often referred to simply as the bilby since the lesser bilby (''Macrotis leucura'') became extinct in the 1950s, is an Australian species of nocturnal omnivorous animal in the order Peramelemorphia. Ot ...

''),

great desert skink The great desert skink (''Liopholis kintorei''), also known commonly as Kintore's egernia, is a species of skink, a lizard in the family Scincidae. The species is endemic to the western half of Australia. It is a burrowing lizard and extremel ...

(''Egernia kintorei''),

marsupial mole Marsupial moles, the Notoryctidae , are highly specialized marsupial mammals, known from two species found at the Australian interior. * ''Notoryctes typhlops'' (southern marsupial mole, known as the ''itjaritjari'' by the Pitjantjatjara and Yan ...

(''Notoryctes sp.'') and

brush-tailed mulgara The brush-tailed mulgara (''Dasycercus blythi''), previously the mulgara ''Dasycercus cristicauda'' is a medium sized carnivorous Australian marsupial species weighing approximately . The brush-tailed mulgara is sexually dimorphic with males bein ...

. The critically endangered 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 (biology), fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Optimal foraging theory, Foraging theory is a branch of behaviora ...

, 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 (geology), rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrasion (geology), abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", ...

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 beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his co ...

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

External links

Map of the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area
{{coord, 21, 10, S, 128, 10, E, type:landmark_region:AU-WA_dim:200000, display=title Indigenous Protected Areas of Western Australia Protected areas established in 2020 2020 establishments in Australia