Seven reasons to keep the savanna intact while

Why keep the North intact?
Keeping the savanna healthy and continuous during the development of Northern Australia is critical for many
reasons:
Australia’s Great Northern Savanna
1. An intact savanna is a key part of Australia’s identity.
The expansive, intact savanna landscape of Northern Australia is part of the Australian psyche and our concept
of the Australian outback. It provides Australians with an irreplaceable sense of place. Its natural, Indigenous
and pastoral heritage provides the backdrop and content of popular books, films and tourism promotions, as
well as prized memories and dreams.
The savanna is part of
our national
psyche and a key
feature of outback
Australia.
The people who live in or love the North are part of this identity and many of them
are drawn here because of the open spaces, the abundance of nature, the lack of
industrialisation, and the connection they build with the landscape around them.
Watching a lightning storm pass in the build up, gazing at an infinity of stars, fishing a
secret spot, or driving through seemingly endless bush, are all part of being in the
Great Northern Savanna. It also provides physical and mental respite and sanctuary
in our sometimes jaded and increasingly busy lives.
Intact and healthy northern landscapes are also a key part of Australia’s ‘clean,
green’ brand which provides us with a huge market advantage over international
competitors. We cannot risk breaching this reputation. We need to maintain our brand in the face of Northern
development and to be able to show that it is genuine and trustworthy.
We believe the fragmentation or diminution of this landscape, and in turn our connections to it, would be a
loss for all of us – Australia would be less unique, less distinct, less ‘Australian’ and our national psyche will be
weaker for it. In developing the North we therefore need to retain an intact savanna as a key aspect of our
national identity.
Our Great North
2. An intact savanna is part of Australia’s rich Indigenous culture and important to
most Indigenous people in the North.
Australian Indigenous culture is the world's oldest living culture, and northern landscapes are an inextricable
part of this. The landscapes and the plants and animals they host are incredibly significant for Aboriginal people
in the region, forming a vital component of people’s wellbeing and life’s meaning.
They are part of the dreaming stories that connect people with their origins and their
Indigenous
environment, and are the heritage of future generations. There are thousands of
connections to
culturally important species and sites across the North and ancestral songlines
imperceptibly connect almost all places. Disassembling such connections would
country are strong
destroy a long-established legacy and likely breach intergenerational trust.
here and sacred
An intact savanna provides Indigenous communities with multiple, important and
renewable resources. Many remote communities source a large proportion of protein
from their land and water resources that cannot be easily replaced with supermarketbought food and that may be threatened by incompatible development.
sites and songlines
stretch right across
the North.
Being able to access country to harvest resources and to pass on stories and
traditions is vital. Development and conservation need to be planned, and weeds and fire managed, to retain
savanna intactness with this in mind.
Rather than add to the pressures facing Indigenous cultural values, it is critical that development strengthens
these values across the North, acknowledging the links between healthy country, healthy culture and healthy
people.
Australia’s Great Northern Savanna
3. An intact savanna provides lasting jobs and income streams.
The intact nature of the savanna provides the people of Northern Australia, visitors and many others with an
enormous range of ongoing economic benefits by supporting established industries such as cattle grazing,
recreation, tourism, commercial and recreational fishing, and allied industries. There are also promising
outlooks for newer and emerging industries such as carbon farming; crocodile farming; aquaculture; apiculture;
education and training products; ethical bio-prospecting; renewable energy; and bush-derived medicines,
pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and specialised foods - Kakadu Plum is an example.
Using and
protecting the
savanna to create
lasting &
meaningful jobs is
not only possible,
but essential.
These industries are sustainable in the long term if the resource base — the savanna
— is managed well, and therefore have multiple direct and indirect benefits for
ongoing jobs and income generation, physical and mental health, cost savings and,
importantly, for community resilience and future opportunities.
Many of these industries would be negatively affected if the savanna was diminished
beyond certain thresholds because of the breakdown of ecological processes that
underpin its productivity. For instance, barramundi populations show a direct
correlation with river flows. If flows are diminished, catches diminish. Another
example is the pastoral industry where stock carrying capacities fall if grazing
regimes are too harsh. More generally, pollution above safe levels has the potential
to affect food webs and water quality right across the savanna. Such deterioration leads to a decline in the
environmental values that attract people to visit or live in Northern Australia and will impact Australia’s
reputation and price advantage as a ‘clean, green’ nation. The latter is cited by almost all industry groups as
incredibly important for exports, especially for emerging Asian middle classes, and something that is very
difficult to regain if tarnished.
An intact savanna will support industries for the long-term and help protect the North’s economic advantages.
Our Great North
Australia’s Great Northern Savanna
4. An intact savanna is an investment in the future.
An intact savanna provides biosecurity insurance for Australia and this role will become increasingly important
as development intensifies across the North. Large undisturbed tracts of vegetation are a critical buffer against
biosecurity threats entering Australia. They also assist existing local industries operating in the North — for
example horticultural producers with large bush buffers can continue to export when
The North’s savanna
more intensely farmed areas are shut down by a disease or virus.
is comparable to the
Great Barrier
Reef or Amazon
Rainforest and can
increasingly provide
multiple ongoing
benefits if
managed well.
An intact savanna across Northern Australia will increasingly provide us with a global
tourism advantage since, as natural and cultural landscapes around the world
become rarer, the value of our intact savanna as a premier destination will increase.
The associated benefits for regional communities, local businesses and Australia as a
whole will continue to rise.
An intact savanna generates multiple ecosystem services that will increase in value
over time — clean water, clean food, carbon sequestration, wellbeing and hazard
mitigation (eg less erosion, dust, flood damage, undesirable fire) are only a few.
An intact savanna will increasingly provide Australians with liveability values and breathing space at a macro
scale, like Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens and Perth’s Kings Park do now at a micro scale.
An intact savanna is increasingly fostering industry and environmental resilience in the face of climate change,
with savanna-dependent industries and some native species able to spread risk over the landscape; for
example, when one part of the North is in drought, another may be experiencing a good wet.
An intact savanna will provide countless future options in terms of, for example, medicines, technology, foods
and genetic diversity.
Finally, retaining such an outstanding asset is fundamental to intergenerational equity.
Our Great North
5. An intact savanna supports outstanding native flora and fauna which, in turn,
support us.
The world’s Tropics have higher biodiversity for any given area than places at higher latitudes, and the
Northern Australian savanna is home to hundreds of species of native plants, mammals, birds, reptiles and
amphibians, and tens of thousands of different species of invertebrates, with many species found nowhere
else. Data is still poor relative to the rest of Australia but so far the North is
known to host more than 75 per cent of Australia’s fish species, 65 per cent of its
The savanna needs to
butterflies/moths, and around 50 per cent of our bird species. More native fish
remain vast to meet
species can be found in one waterhole in Kakadu than are known in the entire
native species’ food and
Murray–Darling system, and this park alone supports 161 grasshopper species1.
Northern Australia also has conspicuously high plant species richness – the
Kimberley supports about 2,000 species of native plants of which about 300 are
endemic. Cape York Peninsula supports about 3,000 with at least 260 endemics.
The much smaller western Arnhem Land plateau includes over 1701. Some 105 of
the entire savanna’s 188 eucalypt species are endemic2.
reproduction needs
and hence provide us
with renewable
resources.
Scientific studies in Australia and internationally3 show that retaining large natural landscapes is critical to
maintaining viable populations of such native flora and fauna. This is especially the case for Northern Australia
where many animal species must move long distances within the region, or from the North to elsewhere, to
find food, shelter and/or breeding sites in response to rainfall conditions, flood extents, fire patterns and other
disturbance factors. Biological movement to alternate habitats is a necessary part of life cycles and, over longer
time periods, gene flows. Basically, many species will not survive here if their dispersal options are too
constrained. Therefore the multiple products and irreplaceable services provided by such ecosystems depend
on the savanna remaining intact.
Australia’s Great Northern Savanna
Our Great North
6. An intact savanna advances our ethical standing as a nation.
We mark our character as a nation by the way we value, cherish and enrich our heritage, and whether we can
develop responsibly and sustainably.
Much of the rest of the world, and many parts of Australia, have been transformed beyond the limits of
ecological sustainability. Such landscapes are marked by declining productivity and ecologically-induced
problems, have remnant patches of degraded natural vegetation, and require large investments to attempt to
repair ecological function and services. In such landscapes, our predecessors were unaware
of, or unconcerned with, ecological thresholds or limits to growth. We don’t yet know in
As steward of
detail what the thresholds are for Northern Australia, but we should learn a lesson of care
the world’s
from those examples, understand the landscape before we push it beyond its limits, and
leave enough unmodified. We mark our integrity and sensibility by learning from our
largest intact
landscape and from the management failures of our predecessors. We have no excuses for
savanna,
getting development wrong and rather have every reason to get it right.
We have international, national and jurisdictional legal obligations to ensure development
occurs within sustainable limits and to conserve biodiversity. Ongoing diminution and
degradation of Northern Australia will sully our stewardship and label us poor managers.
Australia has a
duty of care.
We highlight that many of the articles in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People,
endorsed by Australia, are linked to healthy country.
Further, as well as having economic, ecological, social and cultural values, North Australian native plant and
animal species have an intrinsic value, a right to exist. The United Nations 1982 World Charter for Nature states
that: ‘Every form of life is unique, warranting respect regardless of its worth to Man’. Without healthy country
across Northern Australia that existence is jeopardised.
Australia’s Great Northern Savanna
7. An intact savanna safeguards the places we love across the North.
The North Australian savanna hosts many iconic and internationally-recognised landscapes. These include the
majestic Mitchell Plateau, the floodplains of Kakadu, Arnhem Land, the Gulf wetlands and the Cape York
Peninsula. It also hosts the world’s largest region of free-flowing seasonal rivers and, because catchments are
relatively unmodified, its coastal and shallow marine systems are near pristine. It boasts five world, and eleven
national, heritage sites based on natural and/or Indigenous cultural values, and is generally treasured by
Australians and visitors from across the globe.
It’s full of
irreplaceable
and priceless
gems – a
favourite
swimming hole,
shady camp or
secret fishing
spot.
The savanna is home to many other nationally and regionally recognised natural places
such as Winjana Gorge, El Questro, Litchfield, Barkly Tablelands, Boodjamulla, Undara
and Quinkan country to name but a few.
Beyond these more recognisable treasures are the hidden gems. The savanna hosts
thousands of local places that we love — a favourite swimming hole, shady camp, secret
fishing spot, thrilling 4WD track or cool vineforest pocket.
The health of all these special places is linked with the health and intactness of their
surrounds. Fragmenting a landscape beyond yet-to-be-determined thresholds will result
in irreversible damage. However retaining landscape intactness will allow places to
mostly ‘self-service’ and endure into the future. This will return enormous savings in
avoiding costly repair attempts.
We can replace roads, houses and bridges, but we cannot replace our favourite spots in nature and the positive
feelings we get from them. In a world where travel is easy and in a region where liveability drawcards are
critical, the North needs a point of differentiation and these natural places are globally unique, distinctly
Australian and simply delightful.
Our Great North
Australia’s Great Northern Savanna