NAIDOC Week Yarning Circle Webinar 2026
Hear from three of our awesome Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff as they yarn about conservation partnerships, and this year's NAIDOC theme, '50 Years of Deadly'.
After an incredible 18-year journey, our formal partnership with Warddeken Land Management came to an end in 2025. The organisation was in a strong position with secure governance through its Board; it had invested in additional ecology positions, expanding capacity and opportunity; and it had diversified income streams to support a growing land management program into the future.
The Arnhem Plateau is a region of spectacular stone and gorge country north and east of Kakadu National Park. It’s recognised as a landscape of international biodiversity significance, having been geologically stable for millions of years.
The region supports 166 species of plants and 20 species of vertebrate animals found nowhere else and has numerous, diverse refuge areas that protect plants and animals from fires and climate shifts.
The plateau has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, and Traditional Custodians represent one of the oldest ongoing civilisations on earth. Thousands of spectacular rock art galleries, occupation shelters and other sites of archaeological significance represent a cultural and environmental record stretching back over millennia. These places continue to play an important cultural role.
In 2008 the Bininj Kunwok clans of western Arnhem Land came together to found Warddeken Land Management Limited. Based at the Kabulwarnamyo outstation community, Warddeken is bringing people back onto their traditional lands to manage the country for conservation and to preserve and revitalise their traditional culture.
Image Information
Mary Kolkiwarra on country. Photo David Hancock.
What Warddeken country protects
Animals: Yirlinkirrkkirr (White-throated grasswren), Djabbo (Northern Quoll), Yok (Northern Brown Bandicoot), Black wallaroo, Kordberr (Arnhem Land Rock-rat), Nawaran (Oenpelli Python), Golden-backed Tree Rat, Alyurr (Leichardt's Grasshopper), Delicate Mouse, Saltwater and freshwater crocodiles, Benok (bustard).
Plants: Anbinik / Allosyncarpia ternata, Anlarrk / Callitris intratropica, Boronia quadrilata, Boronia viridiflora
Vegetation communities: Anbinik rainforest, Arnhem Plateau shrubland complex, Sandstone heathlands, Savannah, Paperbark swamp, Headwater wetlands.
Our partnership with Warddeken
Bush Heritage worked in partnership with Warddeken Land Management since 2007 (when they were known as as the Manwurrk Rangers), supporting them to develop and implement a plan of management for the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). The plan helped ensure the sustainable management of the region for conservation, and the protection of important cultural sites under the direction of the Nawarddeken Traditional Custodians.
Development of the plan was a vital step toward declaring the Warddeken IPA in September 2009. Along with the neighbouring Djelk IPA, the declaration encompasses more than two million hectares of land – an area larger than the neighbouring Kakadu National Park.
Indigenous Protected Area status provides a way for Warddeken to protect their traditional country and conserve high-value conservation lands as part of the Australian National Reserve System. It also attracts ongoing funding for land management employment opportunities, which deliver tangible improvements in the health and wellbeing of Indigenous communities.
Bush Heritage supported the development of governance mechanisms for managing the Warddeken IPA, as well as the establishment of a legal framework and endowment fund so supporters could help finance conservation work.
Our early work on this partnership was generously supported through the David Thomas Challenge, The Nature Conservancy and an anonymous donor.
More from our Aboriginal partnerships
