Mepimbat tedul proujek: Indigenous knowledge of freshwater turtle species occurrence in the South East Arnhem Land Indigenous Protected Area

Method steps

1. A series of mapping workshops were conducted in 2016 and 2018 with Indigenous knowledge holders from Ngukurr and Numbulwar. Mapping workshops documented freshwater tedul occurrence (in people’s lifetimes) and distribution within the SEAL IPA. To distinguish between the three different types of freshwater tedul (loungnek (Chelodina rugosa), shotnek (Elseya dentata or Emydura subglobosa worrelli) and jinggijinggi (Chelodina canni)) expected to occur in the region, colour-coded stickers were used to identify known tedul locations on an A0 size laminated topographic map of the IPA (scale 1:250,000). The Ngukurr Yangbala (young people) Rangers collaborated as co-researchers in all mapping workshops. Past freshwater tedul observations (identified by stickers) of each interview group were digitized by photographing hard copy maps and saving as JPEG file formats. The photographs were geo-rectified (aligned) with a map of the same area in ArcMAP version 10.5 (ESRI Inc.)