<p>The Indigenous Desert Alliance (IDA) held a significant
conference of Elders, rangers, community leaders at Uluru, with over 400 attendees making their way to the biannual event. </p>
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<p>The conference celebrated “A Decade of Connection” in reference to the IDA’s past ten years of coordinating these events, with the three-day event running between November 11-14 and containing full-day rosters of workshops.</p>
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<p>The IDA was established to facilitate the sharing of lived experience from the vast network of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rangers across the desert regions of Australia.
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<p>The desert area covered by IDA groups spans over 2,730,000
square kilometres, containing 25 Indigenous Protected Areas, 65 ranger teams and over 78 threatened species.</p>
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<p>AW spoke with Arabana head ranger, Zaheer McKenzie, about the conference and several of the important projects that the Arabana ranger program is involved with more widely.</p>
