- The Kimberley region of northwestern Australia is a biodiversity hotspot and ancestral home of the Karajarri people, who recently dedicated Karajarri Jurarr Ngurra, Australia’s first “Sea Country” Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), covering around 237,000 hectares (587,000 acres) of marine and coastal ecosystems.
- Proponents of IPAs say they can empower Indigenous Australians as decision-makers in land management, combining traditional ecological knowledge with conservation goals.
- IPAs now account for 54% of Australia’s progress toward protecting 30% of its territory by 2030.
- While research shows every $1 invested in IPAs yields up to $3.40 in social, economic and environmental returns, advocates stress that Indigenous communities still need meaningful, sustained support.
In northwestern Australia lies a remote and wildly diverse region called the Kimberley. There, the iron-red soils of the Pindan Country connect forests and the Great Sandy Desert, all bracketed by a vast stretch of Indian Ocean coastline. Its springs and wetlands host migratory birds. Offshore, sawfish, as visually striking as they are rare, ply the waters just beyond the unbroken Eighty Mile Beach, itself a nesting site for the little-known flatback turtle (Natator depressus).
The Kimberley has also long been a home to humans, as rock art more than 17,000 years old attests, and among the heirs of that legacy are the Karajarri people. Over the past 30 years, the Karajarri secured legal recognition of their claims to the land, later establishing an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), Karajarri Pirra Ngurra, that now covers an area of land nearly the size of Rwanda in the state of Western Australia. They also developed a ranger program that draws on long-held cultural knowledge of the landscape.
In March 2026, the Karajarri people dedicated Karajarri Jurarr Ngurra, Australia’s first “Sea Country” IPA, comprising 237,489 hectares (nearly 587,000 acres) of marine and coastal ecosystems. It includes part of Malumpurr, the Karajarri word for Eighty Mile Beach. The IPA “strengthens long‑standing efforts by Karajarri Traditional Owners and Karajarri Rangers to protect the region’s biodiversity and keep Country healthy,” Malarndirri McCarthy, Australia’s minister for Indigenous Australians, said in a March 20 government statement about the Karajarri Sea Country IPA dedication.
The aim of the Karajarri IPAs is to support a mutually beneficial relationship between the land and its longtime stewards, says Jesse Ala’i, former Land and Sea Country manager for the Karajarri Traditional Lands Association.
“In order to have healthy Country, you need healthy people,” Ala’i says. Likewise, he adds, “Healthy people need healthy Country.”
Across Australia, more than 90 IPAs dot the land. And the government recently allocated A$13 million ($9.4 million) in initial funding to add new ones. The IPAs are a critical piece of Australia’s strategy to protect 30% of the country’s territory by 2030, part of the global 30×30 goal aimed at halting biodiversity loss.
“We’re well underway to reaching that target and IPAs are providing more than half of that contribution,” Murray Watt, Australia’s environment minister, said in the government’s statement.
To date, Australia has protected nearly a quarter of its land and oceans, a spokesperson for the environment ministry told Mongabay. According to the Indigenous-governed nonprofit Country Needs People, IPAs account for 54% of that goal. But the organization’s CEO, Paddy O’Leary, says the role of Australia’s extensive IPA network goes beyond meeting those goals.
“The magic sauce in an IPA comes from creating a model that, done well, will put Traditional Owners in a much more proactive position in terms of managing their Country,” O’Leary says.
The relationship between Indigenous Australians and the land they live on is well known, he adds. “It’s historical fact and a truth.
“There’s so many advantages to making that connection more recognized, more seen and more respected,” O’Leary says.
Self-determination and conservation
From the government’s perspective, IPAs are part of the conservation puzzle for protecting the continent’s ecosystems, including those underrepresented in the country’s National Reserve System, O’Leary says. But the designation of an IPA is more than that for Australia’s Indigenous peoples, including Aboriginal groups like the Karajarri as well as distinct peoples from the Torres Strait off the country’s northern coast, he adds.
“It’s a stamp that puts a distinctive Indigenous view on how a given area should be managed,” O’Leary says. “It centers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as not just participants or people to be consulted, but decision-makers and key drivers of the management.”
The IPA tag also provides a pathway for these groups to collaborate with outsiders, he adds. “It makes visible to other stakeholders who might want to collaborate the set of priorities that local Traditional Owners want, and it combines both biodiversity and cultural values in management as well as a governance framework that is built — in a good IPA, should be built — from the ground up by the Indigenous community.”
But building that foundation takes significant time and resources, O’Leary says. This year’s federal funding is intended to be a “catalyst,” to be augmented by grants from supportive NGOs or state governments.
“[It’s] not a huge amount of money, but for small groups, it’s often a very useful amount,” he says.
Role of the rangers
For the Karajarri people, the journey to their own IPA started in the mid-1990s, when a group of elders applied for “Native Title” rights. About a decade later, after government recognition, the Karajarri started their ranger program and began the consultation process for an official IPA. In 2014, the Karajarri people declared their IPA, covering almost 2.5 million hectares (6.1 million acres) of land in the Kimberley. Sustainable resource use is allowed over the vast majority of the land, while part is managed with the same protections as a national park.
The state of Western Australia supports the Karajarri Ranger program, which serves as a fundamental cog in the functioning of an IPA and a source of employment for communities, Ala’i says.
“It’s impossible to separate Indigenous ranger programs from IPAs,” he adds. Ala’i is not Karajarri; instead, he came to his work on the IPA from a background in conservation biology.
“When I heard about ranger programs, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the thing,’” he tells Mongabay. “It’s that intersection for me of the environment and social community development, capacity building [and] mentoring.”
Matilda Murley, a marine invertebrate ecologist and research associate at the University of Western Australia, has spent nearly a decade collaborating with the Karajarri people, working with the rangers on a Karajarri-led project to monitor their shoreline ecosystem in ways that make sense for both their culture and biodiversity.
“They are the cultural custodians being paid to look after Country,” says Murley, who is not Karajarri. “They’re looking out for the community priorities.”
For Western science, the Kimberley coast has largely been a blank spot on the map, with few details about what exists there. But as Murley’s project developed through systematic data collection, as well as workshops and interviews in the Karajarri community, it became clear how much knowledge had been passed down over generations.
“They are the main scientists,” she said of the Karajarri people. “They have this amazing historical knowledge of how things have changed.”
That knowledge and working with these types of projects can be springboards for both the community and individuals, Murley says. “We’re upskilling the rangers.”
Ala’i notes that scientists have learned that a collaborative approach leads to far more successful projects, and it’s benefiting Indigenous communities in Australia, who struggle with much higher rates of poor health and poverty than the broader population. The Karajarri Rangers have co-authored scientific publications with Murley and were also part of a team to report the first adult female dwarf sawfish (Pristis clavata) ever recorded by Western science.
“We’ve got rangers that have gone off to university now,” Ala’i says.
Government agencies, too, are beginning to catch on to the power of thousands of years of experience in the landscape, particularly when it comes to fire, he adds. “You need to turn to Indigenous fire regimes if you want to deal with fire in a changing climate.”
Costs of conservation
Globally, embracing Indigenous-led conservation is increasingly seen as an efficient path for confronting biodiversity loss, climate change and other environmental woes. Research published in 2016 tracked the impact of government and “third-party” funding on five IPAs across Australia. The authors found that every $1 invested in the IPAs and their ranger programs netted between $1.50 and $3.40 in “social, economic, cultural and environmental outcomes.”
At the same time, the Australian government provides billions of dollars to the fossil fuel industry, as well as biodiversity-damaging practices in agriculture, fisheries and forestry, according to a recent study. Around the world, governments spend some $500 billion annually on “harmful subsidies,” which the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calls for reforming by 2030.
Ala’i notes that, however cost-effective IPAs might be, the communities still need meaningful support and shouldn’t be seen simply as a less expensive solution. Still, he says, “I still think it’s fundamentally the best system the government’s ever created” to address conservation and socioeconomic problems.
“It’s very self-determined, if allowed to be, which is what all the research shows is the best way to allow Indigenous people to close those inequalities,” Ala’i adds. “It just hits all the boxes.”
O’Leary of Country Needs People acknowledges the system isn’t perfect, and says successful IPAs rely on careful planning, support and engagement. But, he says, they represent a critical tool that’s being used right now.
“Yes, there are a lot of things to be improved,” he adds. “But this is happening on the ground now in real time. It’s not being theorized in academic papers or in international forums alone. It’s actually happening on the ground for people, and that is where the rubber hits the road.”
Banner image: An Australian flatback sea turtle (Natator depressus). Image by © Dylan Goldspink via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).
John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Using songlines, elders codify traditional knowledge to care for Country
Citations:
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Murley, M., Grand, A., Prince, J., & Karajarri Rangers. (2022). Learning together: developing collaborative monitoring of intertidal invertebrates in the Karajarri IPA, north‐western Australia. Ecological Management & Restoration, 23(1), 53-63. doi:10.1111/emr.12551
Windstein, M., Harry, A. V., Karajarri Rangers, Waltrick, D., Gleiss, A. C., & Travers, M. J. (2025). First record of a mature female dwarf sawfish, Pristis clavata. Journal of Fish Biology, 107(4), 1460-1463. doi:10.1111/jfb.70112
Elton, P., Clement, S., Maron, M., & Ashby, L. (2026). Biodiversity-harmful subsidies in Australia. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 33(1), 11-29. doi:10.1080/14486563.2026.2623910
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