NESP MaC Project 4.18 - Indigenous Ranger-led monitoring of threatened sawfish in the Victoria River, Northern Territory (CSIRO)

Updated: 2026-09-23

This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub project Indigenous Ranger-led monitoring of threatened sawfish in the Victoria River, Northern Territory. For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata. This project will work with Indigenous rangers and Traditional Owners in the Victoria River, Northern Territory, to improve understanding of largetooth sawfish populations. Using close-kin mark-recapture (CKMR), an advanced genetic technique that estimates adult abundance from tissue samples, this project will help establish abundance estimates for this iconic group of species to guide management actions. The project will also strengthen Indigenous Ranger-led monitoring and build capacity for long-term sawfish conservation on Country. This project will build on existing collaborative work with the Timber Creek Indigenous Rangers, Victoria River, that enables the collection of largetooth sawfish tissue samples to directly assist in developing baseline status and trends for sawfish species on Country and could serve as a model for other regions in Australia. Data collected in the Victoria River will be used to improve understanding of seasonal variability in recruitment, survival, growth and animal health in one of Australia’s most important nursery areas for largetooth sawfish. The project will also quantify individual variability in length/mass and fat content to better understand variability in recruitment and survival of juvenile sawfish. The project will train and equip Indigenous rangers to record sawfish captures, body measurements, and survival and release data. Planned Outputs • Catch data from research surveys and/or indigenous ranger programs (Tabular data) • Tissue samples collected by research and or indigenous ranger programs • Final technical report with analysed data and a short summary of recommendations for policy makers of key findings [written]