In early March, KJ started delivering audio recorder training sessions in communities. KJ’s Country & Culture team member, Tam (aka Lunkuta) visited Kunawarritji community where rangers, community members and high school students from Rawa School all came together to learn and practice on the new recorder.

While the communities have been locking down due to the Coronavirus the rangers teams, while practising physical distancing, have been busy caring for country, looking after elders, engaging in cultural activities and giving their workspaces a touch-up.

Deep in the Little Sandy Desert, Martu walked with purposeful footsteps, weaving their way between clumps of spiky green spinifex, fanning out across the sandplain. Eyes were to the ground, reading the small indents, scrapes and scratches in the sand. And then, the tracks the rangers had been looking for: the bounding-overstep motion of the mankarr (greater bilby).

Rangers have been involved in successful helicopter mapping activities to relocate waterholes out of Punmu and Kunawarritji. The work was combined with waru (fire) work to look after the country.

KJ rangers teamed up with a crew of Trackcare volunteers in Kunawarritji to help build toilet facilities on the Canning Stock Route.

For the first time in history, a threatened species recovery plan for Night Parrots was drafted on country with help from rangers, setting a benchmark for government partnerships.

Fire management activities are well underway across Martu country. Following the Incendiary Machine Operator (IMO) training earlier in the year, each ranger team has undertaken aerial burning operations. This work is linking fire scars from previous years to produce fire breaks, and breaking up large areas of unburnt country — the rangers truly are managing fire on a landscape scale.

The Jigalong rangers have been working around Pinpi (Durba Hills) and Kaalpi (Calvert Ranges) to conduct monitoring work on the warru (black-flanked rock wallaby) population, to search for signs of a wiminyji (northern quoll) population and to carry out mankarr (bilby) surveys.

The last three months of cooler weather have seen rangers engaged in fire management activities across Martu Country.

In April, Kunawarritji rangers had a chance to mix with other central desert ranger groups at Central Land Council’s (CLC) Ranger Camp at Glen Helen, NT.