The Australia's Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) is a continental spatial dataset that identifies and reports separately the individual attributes of Australia's Indigenous estate, namely the extent of land and forest over which Indigenous peoples and communities have ownership, management or co-management, and other special rights.
Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) presents information on the Indigenous land estate by the separate attributes of ownership, management or co-management, and other special rights, according to the new methodology described in the ABARES report Australia’s Indigenous land and forest estate: separate reporting of Indigenous ownership, management and other special rights (Jacobsen et al. 2020) (available at: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/AusIndigLandForestEstate_v1.0.0.pdf). The Indigenous land dataset is then combined (intersected) with forest cover information from the Forests of Australia (2023) dataset. The resulting output dataset provides information on the Indigenous estate for both land and forest.
The Indigenous estate land attributes are as follows:
The Australia's Indigenous land and forest estate (2024) dataset shows that a total of:
These areas of land are not mutually exclusive: there is substantial overlap between Indigenous owned land, Indigenous managed or co-managed land, and land subject to other special rights. Spatial intersection of these attributes confirms the total area of land in the Indigenous estate in Australia as at 2023 was 536 million hectares (70%), and the total area of forest in the Indigenous estate as 70 million hectares, as reported in Indicator 6.4a Area of forest to which Indigenous people have use and rights that protect their special values and are recognised through formal and informal management regimes (available at: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/sofr/criterion-6/indicator-6.4a) of Australia’s State of the Forests Report (available at https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/sofr).