Joint management of protected areas in Australia: Native title and other pathways towards a community of practice

On 3 and 4 April 2012, the Northern Territory Department of Natural Resources, Environment, The Arts and Sport (NRETAS) and the Native Title Research Unit (NTRU) at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) convened a workshop of state, territory and Commonwealth government staff working in joint management and native title at the Alice Springs Desert Park. The workshop was titled Joint Management of Protected Areas in Australia: Native Title and Other Pathways towards a Community of Practice.

The aims of the workshop were to:

• Examine the inequities in joint management across and within jurisdictions
• Provide a forum for government staff to discuss challenges in joint management and ways of overcoming them
• Discuss the potential of a national community of practice in joint management across jurisdictions
• Confirm the information collated in jurisdictional overviews of joint management
• Inform future workshops for the joint management sector.

The workshop also sought to implement a recommendation from the Indigenous forum at the Australian Protected Areas Congress in 2008 (APAC08) that the (then) Commonwealth Department of Environment meet with state and territory governments responsible for protected areas to 'explore ways of enabling national networking among co-managed parks, similar to the IPA managers' network, and linkages with the IPA Managers' network'.

This report captures the workshop where government staff working in joint management shared information about their approach and identified practical issues in developing a community of practice.