Indigenous Desert Alliance

Australia’s deserts hold some of the richest biodiversity on the continent. They host the world’s densest lizard populations, with more than 70 species coexisting at a single site, compared with 25 to 35 in the Amazon, and species found nowhere else, including the Great Desert Skink, bilby and night parrot.

These landscapes face growing pressure, from extreme heat and invasive species to the catastrophic wildfires that can devastate communities and ecosystems alike.

Seventy-eight threatened species live in the desert, and protecting them depends on fire being managed the right way, a practice that has endured for over 60,000 years.

Coordinating this at scale is not simple. Ranger groups are spread across remote landscapes, and without stable long-term funding, vital cultural knowledge risks not passing to the next generation.

Indigenous Desert Alliance (IDA) coordinates the work of 70 Indigenous ranger teams, supporting desert mob to protect 270 million hectares of Australian desert, the largest Indigenous-led conservation corridor in the world and around the size of Argentina.

At its centre is the Right Way Desert Fire programme, one of the largest cultural burning programmes in the world. Ranger teams use carefully timed ground and aerial burning to create a fine-scale mosaic of vegetation, improving habitat for native species and lowering the fuel loads that feed uncontrolled fires.

IDA gives ranger teams training, coordination and research support, while cultural authority and decisions about Country stay with desert people. Over four years, the programme has managed fuel loads and restored biodiversity across 145 million hectares, training 885 rangers.

This knowledge also underpins threatened-species recovery. IDA is supporting Indigenous ranger teams to develop the first Indigenous-led recovery plan for the Great Desert Skink, one of 78 threatened species that live in the desert.

IDA’s 29 member organisations now represent more than 95% of Australia’s eligible Indigenous desert land-management sector, formed from ranger connections that go back to 2014. This work is helping the world reach a positive tipping point, a threshold beyond which change becomes self- propelling. Globally, 100 million hectares need to come under active, community-led fire management by 2030.

By 2030, IDA aims to sustain and strengthen this network, with 70 ranger groups caring for 30% of Australia’s land mass.