Development of the Australia's Indigenous forest estate (2013) dataset

Australia uses the Montreal Process framework of criteria and indicators for reporting progress towards sustainable forest management. This includes reporting on the area of Australia's forest over which Indigenous people have use and rights, as recognised through formal and informal management regimes. The term Indigenous is used to refer to Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Consultation with Indigenous stakeholders under the National Indigenous Forestry Strategy indicated a need for a dataset describing the variety of management arrangements for forest on Indigenous land. A new national spatial dataset of forested and non-forested land that is owned or managed by Australia's Indigenous communities, or over which Indigenous people have use and right, was therefore compiled in the National Forest Inventory from information supplied by Australian, state and territory governments and other statutory authorities with Indigenous land management interests. This dataset was then intersected with Australia's 2011 forest cover, to create a spatial dataset which was used to describe and map Australia's Indigenous forest estate.

Four nationally consistent categories were created to represent the range of types of access, use and management that Indigenous people have in regards to land: Indigenous owned and managed; Indigenous managed; Indigenous co-managed; and Other special rights. These categories were used for reporting in Australia's State of the Forests Report 2013 the area of Australia's forest over which Indigenous people have use and rights. A total of 41 million hectares of forest were identified across these four Indigenous management categories. About three-quarters of this Indigenous forest estate is in Queensland and the Northern Territory. The spatial data underlying these area figures were then published as the Australia's Indigenous forest estate (2013) dataset.

This dataset is a significant advance in describing Indigenous use of forest land and involvement in natural resource management. For the first time, a comprehensive national description of the forest areas over which Indigenous people have ownership, management or special rights is available.