Turtle and dugong: A Way Forward

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Indigenous people of Cape York and the Torres Strait have been hunting turtle and dugong for many thousands of years. Their law provided strict guidelines for hunting, harvesting and distributing the meat of these animals. The stocks were monitored and managed carefully to ensure that a respectful environmental balance was maintained.

Unfortunately, times have changed, and turtle and dugong populations are now under threat. Robbie Salee, a community leader from Injinoo, on the tip of Cape York, explains some of the issues around Indigenous turtle and dugong hunting in his area, and some suggestions for moving forward.

Chris Patterson, Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation Field Officer: How have turtle and dugong hunting practises changed?

Robbie Salee: Before it was alright. We never had to go far to get dugong. My grandfather used to get turtle and dugong right there in Injinoo river. Even fish and mullet and other things you could spear in the river. Well, they’re just not there now. There are too many boats. Before we had mangroves all along the river and scrub right up to the edge of the water, but when we started to develop the area for tourism we had to clear the area up and take the mangroves out. Of course this was wrong but we were trying to please this other mob, and now we’ve chased all our resources away.

C: What issues are there about the management boundaries for turtle and dugong populations?
 
R: We’re talking about the dugong that cover the whole of the top end, from old Mapoon down to Lockhart River and out to the Torres Straits. So we’ve got that whole area that we’ve got to talk to. It’s a big area and the dugong move around, all around the coast. You don’t find dugong only here and there and staying in that place, they all move around depending on the tide and the water and the grass. So there’s got to be a network of communication for all these groups of people that live on the coast. Not so much a clan boundary, it’s got to be looked at in a holistic boundary. Looked at from all the way from old Mapoon on the west side to Lockhart River on the east side, and everything in between.

C: How would you encourage the community to become involved in management?

R: Before looking at other issues you need to do a workshop on respect. People always say that if you don’t know your culture and you don’t know your identity, then you don’t know where you come from. So that one first, so everybody knows who belongs to where. Then you talk about the management. There is no doubt about the importance of income. Whether you work or you don’t work, it’s still going to come. It’s there and it’s available. Anybody can climb up that ladder to be in that rich family world. You are able to buy that big fast boat to race out there and if you don’t get any food you can go back the next day. But you need that strategy workshop on us human beings.
C: What are some of the issues about community control over turtle and dugong management?

R: One of the problems is that people can’t get together to talk about the issues. We know that people in our communities want to manage turtle and dugong but people need the resources to get together and talk about it. If we don’t sit down and talk about it, then it (dugong and turtle populations) is going to get used up anyway. If we get people from across Cape York to come together and sit down and talk about it, then we come up with some management, a management structure. At the moment we manage it but it’s within our own eyes – we manage it individually. For example, two years ago there were 30 dugong taken in the week before Christmas, and that was so people could have dugong for Christmas dinner. So you have Elders saying they are concerned about the dugong but still there are 30 taken in one week. But the Elders can’t get together to talk about it. They just don’t have the money to get a car, get the petrol and drive down to the next community and discuss it. People are willing to sit down and talk but unless that bit is taken care of we can’t come up with a joint management structure.

C: What strategies could help turtle and dugong management?

R: Part of the management workshop should be to look at quotas for each area. We should also look how we hunt them. The spear is made up of the ‘koiyurr’ and the ‘tatar’ – the two main things that are used to spear the dugong and turtle. Somebody might have to hold onto those things. Then they can say ‘ok here’s your permit, and here is your koiyurr and tatar’, now go and get your meat and come back to see how many you have’. If they come back and we see that the koiyurr and tatar is used then we know they have taken a turtle or dugong. We could even look at issuing each hunter with a plastic bag containing a tape, pen, pencil, rubber, and the koiyurr and tatar. That way they can measure the animal and write down all the details as it is caught.

back to The NAILSMA Turtle and Dugong Project - Cape York component