2008 Press Release

PR329

Working together for the Torres Strait

For Immediate Release 26 September 2008

Members of the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF) today met with key Torres Strait management agencies to highlight some of the important outcomes from the latest research projects being conducted in Australia's most northern region.

Seventeen Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) Board members and local representatives from federal Australian Government agencies such as Australian Fisheries Management Authority and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, attended a consultative public meeting and interacted with scientists and research managers from the MTSRF.

The $40 million MTSRF is part of the Australian Government's Commonwealth Environment Research Facility program, and is managed in North Queensland by the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre (RRRC). The MTSRF aims to provide solution science that will help ensure sustainable use and management of North Queensland’s key environmental assets: the Great Barrier Reef and its catchments, rainforests of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, and the Torres Strait.

Results from a wide range of research projects were discussed at the meeting, including ways to increase the resilience of Torres Strait communities to climate change, improving the sustainability of dugong and turtle harvesting practices through community-based planning, the potential economic benefits of sponge aquaculture, and co-management of hand-collectible fisheries.

TSRA Chairperson, Mr Toshie Kris said research projects like these are vital for the future of the Torres Strait as the results will help both managers and the community make better decisions about the sustainable use of the region's important environmental resources.”

Ms Sheriden Morris, CEO of the RRRC, agreed. “The Reef and Rainforest Research Centre is different from many other research providers, because we have a very strong focus on making sure publicly-funded research projects – such as the MTSRF - actually benefit the public.”

“Each year the MTSRF invests around $400,000 of federal Australian government funding in Torres Strait research,” she added. “The job of the RRRC is to work together with the TSRA and other organisations so that the Torres Strait region community receives a good return on this investment.”

A focus of discussion during the meeting was a new project that is being developed collaboratively between RRRC and TSRA’s Land and Sea Management Unit. This project, which will also be funded through the MTSRF, aims to repatriate research knowledge generated by the now-completed Cooperative Research Centre for the Torres Strait back into the Torres community Island communities.

“This knowledge repatriation project will help change community perceptions of researchers as knowledge-takers,” said Mr Kris. “Instead, we want researchers to become knowledge-sharers, by delivering relevant, accessible, useful information to the community.”

Ms Morris noted that close cooperation between the MTSRF and TSRA was fundamental to this process. “MTSRF researchers consider themselves partners of the community in these projects. Involvement of the community from the beginning is the key to success in terms of actually delivering benefits from research.”

For further information please contact:
Ms Sheriden Morris, CEO of the RRRC, 0408019167
Torres Strait Regional Authority: Kerry Shegog 07 4069 0700

For more information about the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility,
please see www.rrrc.org.au