Wooleen Station pastoralist David Pollock demonstrates the grazing systems used in the arid rangelands regions of Australia are not sustainable. Periodic rest periods for important pasture species have not been adopted due to high competition for grazing from rabbits, wild goats and kangaroos. David argues the best solution to this unmanaged grazing is the dingo, an important apex predator in the ecosystem unhelpfully mischaracterized as a “wild dog” to justify widespread culling programs.

The latest issue of the Proceedings of the RSV features papers from the 2021 ‘Stewardship of Country’ Symposium, which delivered presentations across multiple domains of land management practice and scholarly expertise, representing an historic collaboration between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts, industry practitioners and thinkers. The series posed the question: who are we becoming, as Australians faced with an increasingly unpredictable and challenging future?

Stewardship describes a deep relationship between people and place. In modern Australia, it is often proposed as the next step of transition for a culture that is emerging from a colonial, extractive relationship to the landscape. The transition to stewardship may require we reorganise around the unique characteristics of the country, undertake significant regeneration of damaged ecosystems and deprioritise constant economic growth in favour of an enduring sufficiency gathered from a prosperous and biologically diverse environment. Join members of all the Royal Societies in Australia for this unique series of three webinars, seeking a new model for the management of the Australian landscape so that our natural systems are conserved and regenerated for the benefit of future generations.