- Australia’s Kimberley region houses some of the country’s most botanically diverse ecosystems: monsoon rainforest patches.
- Although they’ve been harvested and cared for by First Nations groups for millennia, the patches remain largely unsurveyed by modern science as the tropical climate and rugged terrain make access difficult.
- Indigenous ranger teams have been working for more than 20 years to implement land management programs, including traditional burning regimes, in order to conserve the rainforest.
- A recently published general interest book has called for the preservation of Kimberley Monsoon Rainforest patches and for ongoing, close collaboration between First Nations communities and academic teams.
The Kimberley, the northernmost region of Australia’s largest jurisdiction, Western Australia, is remote and difficult to access due to its rugged terrain.
With a permanent population of just 40,000 in an area roughly the size as California, it has become internationally renowned for its dramatic landscapes: researchers say the Kimberley houses the largest, most intact savanna on Earth, and is bounded by some of the most pristine oceans in the world.
However, the Kimberley is also home to a habitat that’s far less known: seasonally dry tropical rainforest.
Located in patches embedded in a mosaic pattern within eucalypt savanna, these species-rich ecosystems are collectively known as Kimberley Monsoon Rainforests (KMR). They’re intrinsically linked to the culture and livelihoods of local First Nations communities who have harvested from and cared for the patches for millennia.
Evolving in isolation upon nutrient-rich substrates and in areas largely protected from incursions by the threat of wildfire, the KMR hold significant biodiversity. Despite this, less than one-tenth of KMR patches have been comprehensively scientifically researched.
There’s now a push to expand global awareness of how important these sites are from both biological and cultural standpoints.
In 2023, Kevin Kenneally, a botanist and biogeographer at the University of Western Australia, published a general interest book about KMR in which he sought to expand knowledge of their existence into the common sphere.
Islands in a Sea of Savanna, released by UWA Publishing, takes into account Kenneally’s half-century connection to the Kimberley and was written, Kenneally told Mongabay, as a way to promote the existence of KMR beyond the scientific community.
“The northwest Kimberley is regarded by many researchers as one of the last great botanical frontiers in the world,” Kenneally said. “The Kimberley Monsoon Rainforests are relatively unknown and have not been greatly surveyed by scientific teams. I have been visiting the region for almost five decades, and the reason I decided to write the book for a general audience was to draw attention to these little-known but extremely important biota.”
>Kenneally first encountered the KMR in 1974 on a biological survey trip supported by the Western Australian state government, an expedition that was followed by several more over the succeeding decade. These expeditions discovered many species new to science and were seminal in scientific collaborations with local First Nations communities.
“In the late 1970s and early ’80s, when the first of these expeditions were undertaken, there were very few regulations about visiting heritage sites or even in seeking the consent of Traditional Owners,” Kenneally recalled. “We considered it absolutely essential to always have a local Indigenous person with us when conducting these surveys, to ensure that we were approaching sites of significance appropriately and also to learn from one other.”
Many KMR patches are located on the lands of the Wunambal Gaambera people, whose traditional land and sea country takes in the northernmost regions of the Kimberley, some of the most anthropogenically untouched land- and seascapes in Australia. The area is seen as one of Australia’s key bastions for mammalian diversity. Research has found the continent has the highest mammalian extinction rate in the world, losing an average of a species per decade over the past two centuries.
Known as wulo in the Wunambal Gaambera language, KMR patches have continued to provide local peoples with subsistence, as they have for generations. Commonly harvested food and medicinal plants include the long yam (Discorea transversa), known as garnmarnggu in the Wunambal Gaambera language, and black plum or gulangi anya (Vitex glabrata). Game animals include the jarringgu anya, or black flying fox (Pteropus alecto). The trunk of the wurndala or red kapok tree (Bombax ceiba) has long been used for dugout canoes.
Catherine Goonack, who wrote the foreword to Kenneally’s book, is chair of the Wunambal Gaambera Aboriginal Corporation (WGAC), which represents the rights and interests of the Wunambal Gaambera people. She said a key initiative for the corporation is for traditional knowledge about KMR to be preserved and passed on to future generations.
“Most patches of wulo on Wunambal Gaambera Country are less than a hectare in size,” Goonack said. “Some yabuli [land snails and pseudoscorpions] found in wulo on Wunambal Gaambera Country are not found anywhere else in the world. They are called short-range endemics.
“Wulo can be a dangerous place. It is dark and there is thick forest and lots of vines. The spirits in wulo can be harmful to children, so it is important that they visit with an adult.”
The remoteness of the north Kimberley and the limited land management resources mean there’s currently a suite of threats facing many patches of KMR.
In his book, Kenneally says these include invasive plants and animals, and wildfire — concerns echoed by Tom Vigilante, WGAC’s healthy country manager, whose role oversees land management within the corporation.
“Some of our most pressing issues relate to feral animals, such as cattle, which seek shelter in the cooler areas of the monsoon rainforest patches,” Vigilante told Mongabay. “These animals can also disperse weeds and compact the ground, affecting native plant species and potentially raising the possibility of wildfire risk.”
WGAC has responded to these threats through land management operations headed by its healthy country team, which includes the Uunguu Rangers. One of dozens of Indigenous ranger teams that operate across northern and central Australia and funded largely by the federal government, the Uunguu Rangers use traditional knowledge and cultural practices in conjunction with modern scientific methods to deliver environmental, social and economic development outcomes.
Vigilante said the ranger team has fenced off an isthmus connecting the mainland to the Bougainville Peninsula, known as Wargul Wargul in Wunambal Gaambera, as a means to keep out feral livestock. The peninsula is an important cultural area and houses one of the largest and best-known patches of KMR.
Vigilante also noted that for more than a decade, Wunambal Gaambera Traditional Owners and the Uunguu Rangers have reestablished traditional fire regimes, burning the wider savanna areas around the rainforest patches at the start of the dry season when fire is easier to control. This helps to ensure that wildfire can’t take hold at the end of the dry season and potentially damage the edges of rainforest patches.
In 2024, a study published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire based on more than 20 years of data found that the implementation of traditional burning regimes across Wunambal Gaambera Country and neighboring Indigenous estates has led to a decrease of wildfire frequency across the north Kimberley. The paper says the study is the longest-running and largest area ever examined in fine-resolution burnt area mapping.
The success of these regimes has had profound effects internationally, with Indigenous groups across the tropics adopting the tenets of traditional burning in northern Australia. In turn, this has presented Australian rangers with the opportunity to share their knowledge.
For example, the International Savanna Fire Management Initiative, an Australian nonprofit that aims to revitalize Indigenous fire knowledge globally, is currently working with Indigenous groups and national governments across Southern Africa, Asia and the Americas to develop a methodology, based largely on Australian traditional burning, that will be applicable for land management initiatives across savanna landscapes.
In 2019, a delegation of rangers from several northern Australian Aboriginal corporations, including from the Kimberley, traveled to Botswana to outline traditional practices. While there, they interacted with local fire managers, Indigenous peoples, scientists and representatives from neighboring countries, including Mozambique and Namibia.
Such is the importance of rainforest for WGAC that preservation of KMR patches is one of the key targets in future land management operations.
“We want our traditional knowledge passed onto future generations and [our aim] is that wulo have not got smaller in size and are intact and no species of plant or animal in wulo are lost,” Goonack said.
These sentiments have found support in Kenneally, who argues in his book that the conservation of the KMR must be made a priority by local and federal governments.
There are currently few protections under legislation for the rights of Indigenous communities to benefit economically from biological species found within KMR. Kenneally notes that the lack of formal protections has led in some cases to biopiracy — where a third party uses a traditional biological resource or exploits traditional knowledge without the consent of the group in question.
The precedent has already been set for Australian rainforest species. In his book, Kenneally outlines the case of the Kakadu plum (Terminalia ferdinandiana), a common species across northern Australia that’s known for its high vitamin C content. In 2007, U.S. cosmetics company Mary Kay Inc. filed a patent for extracts of the Kakadu plum without consultation with First Nations groups who have long harvested the fruit of the plant. In his book, Kenneally notes that Mary Kay didn’t contravene any legislation in the process; rather, inconsistent legislation in Australia meant that Indigenous peoples were unable to challenge the process, nor to benefit from collaboration with the company.
Mary Kay did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment by the time of publication.
In addition to passing legislation to protect KMR sites, Kenneally said there needs to be the establishment of a permanent, tropical biodiversity research center in northern Kimberley, which would be able to house researchers throughout the year, especially during the monsoon when many botanical species are at their richest.
Having a base near local communities, he said, would also allow for cross-cultural knowledge sharing with Traditional Owners and extensive collaboration.
“Just recognizing the significance of the monsoonal rainforests is not sufficient,” Kenneally said. “They first need legislative protection to ensure conservation and survival. Having a research center will result in benefits for both Traditional Owners and for research teams alike, and allow for new industries to be created around new biological discoveries.
“Every rainforest patch is precious. We cannot afford to lose the jewels in the crown of Kimberley botany.”
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Banner image: Black flying foxes are found in the forests of the Kimberley region of northern Australia. Image by Andrew Mercer via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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