Sustainable sandalwood ( Santalum spicatum ) management in Western Australia under Aboriginal control

The Western Australian (WA) government is reviewing the State’s commercial sandalwood industry, promoting greater Aboriginal participation through both policy choice and legal obligation, while re-assessing sustainable harvesting levels. Aboriginal people who hold native title legally influence access to sandalwood available for harvesting in the rangelands through the Future Act provisions of the Native Title Act 1993. Many native title holders in WA also now have ‘rights to use resources for any purpose’, providing a right to commercially trade their sandalwood. Meanwhile, the WA State Government retains a statutory responsibility for ensuring sandalwood is regenerating so that harvesting is sustainable. Concurrently, there is a debate among scientists and civil society groups about whether sandalwood is naturally regenerating sufficiently to maintain the species, with some claims of potential extinction in the wild (i.e. outside of plantations). Additional formal listing of the species as threatened will influence Government decisions about commercial use. While the level of natural regeneration is crucial in assessing the conservation status of sandalwood, it is less relevant in harvested stands in the rangelands, where the crucial question is whether artificial regeneration is succeeding. We assert that natural sandalwood regeneration, while contracting from historic levels, still establishes in favoured sites if browsing by rabbits, sheep, goats and camels is controlled, and the trees are protected from bushfires. Sandalwood also regenerates from seed hand-planted amongst natural vegetation, and we document mature stands of 100 year old trees that have been created in this way. There has been very promising regeneration in the rangelands after 15 years of contemporary seed planting associated with commercial harvesting by the native title holding group of the Mungilli area, and after 4 years at Cosmo Newberry. We conclude that a sustainable commercial sandalwood industry and a viable conservation strategy are possible under Aboriginal stewardship.