DOI: 10.25814/5c5a1732757f8
title: Australia's Indigenous forest estate (2018)

description: Australia’s Indigenous forest estate (2018) is a continental spatial dataset of forest and non-forest land over which Indigenous peoples and communities have ownership, management, or rights of use, assembled for Australia's State of the Forests Report 2018. It was developed from multiple data sources, including national, state and territory datasets related to land in which there is an Indigenous interest. The Indigenous land dataset is then combined with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2018) dataset. The dataset was compiled by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) for the National Forest Inventory (NFI), a collaborative partnership between the Australian and state and territory governments. The role of the NFI is to collate, integrate and communicate information on Australia's forests. The NFI applies a national classification to state and territory data to allow seamless integration of these datasets. Multiple independent sources of external data are used to fill data gaps and improve the quality of the final dataset. The NFI classifies Indigenous land into four categories: • Indigenous owned and managed: freehold land that is both owned and managed by Indigenous communities • Indigenous managed: land that is managed, but not owned, by Indigenous communities; and lands that are owned by Indigenous people but have formal shared management agreements with Australia and state and territory government agencies • Indigenous co-managed: land that is owned and managed by other parties, but has a formal, legally binding agreement in place that includes input from Indigenous people in the process of developing and implementing a management plan • Other Special rights: land subject to native title determination, registered Indigenous land use agreement, and legislated special cultural use provision. The Australia’s Indigenous forest estate (2018) dataset is produced to fulfil requirements of Australia's National Forest Policy Statement and the Regional Forests Agreement Act 2002 (Cwth), and is used by the Australian Government for domestic and international reporting. Previous versions of this dataset are available on the Forests Australia website spatial data page and the Australian Government open government data portal data.gov.au.
description: Australia’s Indigenous forest estate (2018) is a continental spatial dataset of forest and non-forest land over which Indigenous peoples and communities have ownership, management, or rights of use, assembled for Australia's State of the Forests Report 2018. It was developed from multiple data sources, including national, state and territory datasets related to land in which there is an Indigenous interest. The Indigenous land dataset is then combined with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2018) dataset. For reporting purposes in SOFR 2018 the National Forest Inventory (NFI) groups Indigenous land into four categories as described in Dillon et al. (2015): • Indigenous owned and managed: freehold land that is both owned and managed by Indigenous communities • Indigenous managed: land that is managed, but not owned by Indigenous communities • Indigenous co-managed: land that is owned and managed by other parties, but has a formal, legally binding agreement in place that includes input from Indigenous people in the process of developing and implementing a management plan • Other Special rights: land subject to native title determination, registered Indigenous land use agreement and legislated special cultural use provision. The four categories above are ranked from highest-level of Indigenous ownership and management, to lowest. All data sources obtained were analysed and evaluated against criteria of land ownership, management or rights of use, and allocated against one of the four categories. Those areas identified to be subject to more than one category were classified into the highest-level Indigenous land ownership and management category. Table 1 below describes each of the data sources used and the source agency, by the allocated Indigenous land category. Table 1 Datasets compiled on lands over which Indigenous peoples have use and rights Data source Source agency Indigenous owned and managed Indigenous Protected Areas Department of the Environment and Energy (DoEE) Indigenous Land Corporation owned and transferred lands Indigenous Land Corporation NSW Aboriginal Land Council and Local Aboriginal Land Council (LALC) lands NSW Land Registry Services NT Aboriginal Lands Trust lands NT Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics Queensland Deed of Grant in Trust Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy (DNRM) Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land trusts Queensland DNRM SA Aboriginal Land Trust and Indigenous community freehold SA Land Services Group (LSG) Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Trust lands Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania Victorian Traditional Owner Settlement agreements Victoria Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) Victorian Indigenous community freehold (under various Aboriginal Land Acts) Victoria DELWP (obtained from National Native Title Tribunal) Indigenous managed Leased-back nature reserves State and territory government conservation agencies, DoEE Leasehold lands associated with ILUAs Indigenous Land Use Agreement summaries on National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) register SA Indigenous community leases SA LSG WA Aboriginal Lands Trust WA Department of Aboriginal Affairs WA Indigenous pastoral leases WA Land Information Authority, trading as Landgate Indigenous co-managed Nature conservation reserve memoranda of understanding or advisory committees State and territory government conservation agencies, DoEE Nature conservation reserves plans of management State and territory government conservation agencies, DoEE World Heritage Area memoranda of understanding or advisory committees State and territory government conservation agencies, DoEE Other special rights Native title determinations NNTT Indigenous Land Use Agreements NNTT NSW Aboriginal Areas NSW Office of Environment and Heritage WA national parks and reserves with customary use provisions WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions Drinking water catchments with legislated Indigenous rights for cultural use WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation All input datasets were converted to 100 metre cell size rasters is Esri grid format, aligning with relevant standard NFI state or territory masks (also known as NFI snap grids), in Albers projection. Where the input dataset was in polygon format, the Polygon to Raster tool was used to convert the polygon dataset to raster format, using the Maximum Combined Area option. The output nation-wide Indigenous land dataset was then combined (intersected) with the forest cover information identified by the Multiple Lines of Evidence (MLE) approach used to develop the Forests of Australia (2018) dataset. This identified the forest cover status of land over which Indigenous people have ownership, management, or rights of use. Further reading: Dillon R, Jeyasingham J, Eades S and Read S (2015). Development of the Australia’s Indigenous forest estate (2013) dataset. ABARES Research report 15.6, Canberra. http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/publications/display?url=http://143.188.17.20/anrdl/DAFFService/display.php?fid=pb_aif13d9abfs20150828_11a.xml