The Australia's Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) is a continental spatial dataset that identifies and reports separately the individual attributes of Australia's Indigenous estate, namely the extent of land and forest over which Indigenous peoples and communities have ownership, management or co-management, and other special rights.
Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) presents information on the Indigenous land estate by the separate attributes of ownership, management or co-management, and other special rights, according to the new methodology described in the ABARES report Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate: separate reporting of Indigenous ownership, management and other special rights (Jacobsen et al. 2020) (available at: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/AusIndigLandForestEstate_v1.0.0.pdf). The Indigenous land dataset is then combined (intersected) with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2023) dataset. The resulting output dataset provides information on the Indigenous estate for both land and forest.
The Indigenous estate land attributes are as follows:
- Indigenous owned: freehold land or forest that is owned by Indigenous communities, or land or forest for which ownership is vested through other mechanisms
- Indigenous managed: land or forest that is managed by Indigenous communities
- Indigenous co-managed: land or forest that has formal, legally binding agreements in place to include input from Indigenous people in the process of developing and implementing a management plan
- Other special rights: land or forest subject to native title determinations, registered Indigenous Land Use Agreements, and legislated special cultural use provisions.
The Australia's Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) dataset shows that a total of:
- 154 million hectares of land in Australia (20%) is Indigenous owned, of which 24 million hectares is forest
- 192 million hectares of land in Australia (25%) is under some form of Indigenous management, comprising 156 million hectares that is Indigenous managed and 36 million hectares that is Indigenous co-managed. Of this, 31 million hectares is forest, comprising 20.7 million hectares that is Indigenous managed and 10.6 million hectares that is Indigenous co-managed
- 443 million hectares of land in Australia (58%) is subject to other special rights for Indigenous peoples and communities, of which 62 million hectares if forest.
These areas of land are not mutually exclusive: there is substantial overlap between Indigenous owned land, Indigenous managed or co-managed land, and land subject to other special rights. Spatial intersection of these attributes confirms the total area of land in the Indigenous estate in Australia as at 2023 was 536 million hectares (70%), and the total area of forest in the Indigenous estate as 70 million hectares, as reported in Indicator 6.4a Area of forest to which Indigenous people have use and rights that protect their special values and are recognised through formal and informal management regimes (available at: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/sofr/criterion-6/indicator-6.4a) of Australia’s State of the Forests Report (available at https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/sofr).
