Rowena Mouda is expecting some day soon tourists will flock to her pristine island home in Western Australia and is determined to be ready.

Her country, Mayala, is made up of hundreds of islands in the Buccaneer Archipelago in northern WA and is home to narbalek, rock wallabies, turtles, dugongs, and whales that live largely uninterrupted by tourists.

Under a new agreement with the federal government her home will become an Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), which means the people who manage the area will be the traditional owners who have intergenerational knowledge of the land.

"Our family identity is across that country," Ms Mouda said.

Ms Mouda accepts her home would not stay a secret forever and wants a say in how to keep the area pristine when the tourists come.

"People want to travel, people want to see places, and tourism has been promoted for the Kimberley," she said.

"We have seen the impact it has had on our neighbouring groups and therefore we want to be ready for the visitors that are likely to turn up."

New IPAs in WA, Queensland

The $15 million expansion of the IPA program will see Indigenous landowners take over responsibility for seven new areas encompassing 3.7 million hectares across WA's Kimberley, the Torres Strait, and far north Queensland.

IPAs will also be set up in Nyul Nyul, Ngurra Kayanta, and Nyikina Mangala in Western Australia and Umpila, Masig islands, and Iama islands in Queensland.

It is a move that has been welcomed by Kimberley Land Council CEO Tyronne Garstone who wants to see more collaboration between governments and Indigenous landowners.

"It's about enhancing the current landscape and valuing the actual aspects of how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have managed that country for millennia," he said.

Indigenous protected areas on the rise

There are now 85 IPAs across Australia, the bulk of which are in remote areas of regional WA.

Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley said she hoped that number would grow.

"We're genuine, we're serious, we want to see more Indigenous Protected Areas, and we know that once they become established they're there forever," Ms Ley said.

She said she there was an appetite for tourism in these areas but that would need to be grown in consultation with traditional owners.

"I would like to see more people visit them," she said.

"I think there are opportunities where we could have cultural, traditional owner tourism to some of these IPAs and really showcase a part of Australia that many Australians would never normally see."

'A great success'

In places where IPAs have been in place for several years the program has been hailed a great success.

In WA's Gibson Desert, west of the Northern Territory border, lies the Kiwirrkurra area — an arid area of sand, salt lakes, and spinifex.

The region is home to bilbies and the great desert skink, both vulnerable species in Western Australia.

Over the past twenty years, Kiwirrkurra IPA coordinator Rachel Paltridge has seen bilby populations nearby disappear, but since the introduction of an IPA in 2014, rangers have ramped up feral cat controls, fire management, and monitoring.

Dr Paltridge said it had made a huge difference.

"We were worried about the population of bilbies," she said.

"Further east into the Northern Territory bilbies have disappeared from that sort of latitude."

Great desert skink numbers have also risen dramatically, with the number of inhabited burrows at monitored sites climbing from just nine in 2016 to 57 this year.

Dr Paltridge said Kiwirrkurra had even started to take in tourists before the COVID-19 pandemic closed remote communities.

"Just kind of pilot studies at this stage, but we have done overnight camping with tourist groups. The community is quite interested in pursuing that further," she said.