What image does the word "wilderness" conjure in your mind?

Maybe it's damp moss encircling a giant myrtle-beech in takayna/Tarkine, or dry red earth and rocky outcrops deep in the centre of the continent.

Or it might conjure nothing at all. 

We don't all perceive wilderness the same way, and for Wardandi and Bibbulmun woman Chontarle Bellottie, it's a totally foreign concept.

"Because for me, my interpretation of [wilderness] is untouched, whereas we know as traditional owners that we've cultivated and gathered and hunted for so many thousands of years ... in a way where we've been able to live off the land in a very sustainable way."

While some people might not associate wilderness with a complete absence of people, many do, and that's a problem, according to Wiradjuri scientist Michael Fletcher.

Dr Fletcher, a palaeoecologist and geographer at the University of Melbourne, started exploring the idea when investigating the formation of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area landscape.

"I found it was people who were responsible for its present form and its form over the past 40,000 years," Dr Fletcher says.

His analysis of sediment layers suggest that the lush temperate rainforest that we see today was, until colonisation, eucalypt savannah and grassland actively managed by Aboriginal people.

It's time to strike terms like "wilderness" from our lexicon, he adds.

"While they're just words, they're actually very powerful."

The 'shackles of wilderness' 

The prevalence of the wilderness concept means global conservation policy and public perception still often overlook how biodiverse landscapes have been shaped by Indigenous people, Dr Fletcher argues in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

"Globally, many places that are called 'wilderness' are either current home to Indigenous people who actively manage the landscape, or are former landscapes which Indigenous people were the managers of, and are still trying to get recognition and agency back into their territories," he says.

Dr Fletcher says excluding Indigenous people from places, whether under the guise of wilderness protection or not, has degraded the health of those ecosystems — especially in Australia.

But there is disagreement over use of the term "wilderness" in conservation science, and it comes down to how you define it, according to James Watson, a conservation biologist at the University of Queensland, who was not involved in the study.

Although Dr Watson agrees with most of what the paper suggests about the need to include Indigenous people in conservation efforts, he says the idea that scientists still use the term wilderness to imply an absence of people was "nonsense".

Scientists who map wilderness areas around the world, including Dr Watson, don't consider those places untouched by people, and acknowledge the contributions of Indigenous people in their research, he says.

"We have been trying to work out where those places in the world that have no industrial level footprint are."

However, he acknowledged that the term "wilderness" is problematic.

"But mapping and trying to protect these places with local communities is still critical when you think about climate change and biodiversity conservation."

Wilderness in science

Reconciling the fact Australia's diverse ecosystems are not necessarily "pristine" is something ecologist Dale Nimmo has been trying to do since finishing university.

"I remember sitting on a remote hilltop where I did my PhD and looking out across the landscape and thinking how vast and beautiful it was because it seemed untouched," he says.

"And that was the kind of mindset that I had at that time."

But after working across Australia with different Indigenous communities, Dr Nimmo, who's now based at Charles Sturt University, realised his perception of those landscapes was warped.

"They're not the intact, amazing thing that I probably thought they were," he says.

"They're actually landscapes that have had species go extinct.

"And they're also missing one of the most vital components, which is the people that would have lived and been a part of that ecosystem for many thousands of years prior to European colonisation."

As well as working with Indigenous communities, Dr Nimmo now tries to ensure that the concept of people as land managers is deeply embedded within his research and teaching.

"People are part of nature, so they need to be part of the equation when you're thinking about how ecosystems work," he says.

"You're taught to focus on the plants and the animals, and there's never enough acknowledgement of the missing components of these landscapes that are cultural."

Healing country

Acknowledging that Indigenous people are part of the landscape you're studying is hard to fit within the western science system, according to Dr Fletcher.

"And if that's the notion that landscapes are in their optimal condition with maximum biodiversity and zero human footprint, then that guides the kind of experiments you do and the inferences you make from the data."

Simply engaging with traditional owners about conservation science or projects on their land is not enough, Dr Fletcher adds.

"We need Indigenous people right through to structure and governance, helping and making decisions," he says.

"They become more valuable because they're people's lands."

Ms Bellottie, who works as the Aboriginal engagement manager at Bush Heritage Australia, says Aboriginal partnerships with the organisation are led and run by the traditional owners of the land with guidance from people like her.

"My connection to where I'm from really helps me work with other Aboriginal groups, supporting them to achieve what they want for their country," she says.

"And I feel that I'm walking in the ancestors' footsteps by carrying on our responsibility to continue that caring for country, because we're born with that.

"We get to do it side by side with the Western science way, but also of using our traditional ecological knowledge, and both systems are so important for conservation actions."

The draw of the wild

The Australian wilderness movement was fundamentally responsible for saving the southwest of Tasmania in the Franklin Dam debate, which Dr Fletcher acknowledges.

"It was partly because of the photos of Peter Dombrovskis, which captured the imagination of people and invoked this idea of wilderness," he says.

"But also at the time in the '70s, who gave a toss what a black person was saying about their country? There was no real Aboriginal voice there that had any power.

"So it's a good thing that the wilderness movement was able to do what it did."

And that magical allure of something wild and unfamiliar is inherently attractive to people, according to Pakana Tralwulway man Andry Sculthorpe from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

"The term wilderness generates a mystique that is more marketable to people wanting to get away from their lives and into an experience with nature," Mr Sculthorpe says.

But, when it comes to the Tasmanian wilderness at least, he says the emphasis is on facilitating tourists.

"There's not adequate facilitation or recognition of the views of the Aboriginal community who would like to also be part of the management of those areas and also begin to reoccupy some of those areas.

"All the effort and resources go into facilitating white visitation, which is still excluding Aboriginal people by not providing mechanisms and resources where they can under their own objectives and community structures enjoy the World Heritage area as well."

In the World Heritage Area there are also questions of whether the term "wilderness" can still be used given proposed tourism developments.

But could removing the word "wilderness" put places at increased risk of damage by humans.

"I think we're clever enough as a society now to move beyond 'it's not wilderness, therefore we can trash it,'" Dr Fletcher says.

"But at the moment, you're not valuing Aboriginal people, and you're not addressing the core issues of what's causing the degradation of these landscapes, and that's removal of people.