The Torres Strait is an ecologically significant region that has long attracted strong scientific interest. This focus, however, has often shaped environmental monitoring and management in ways that do not fully reflect community priorities. For Torres Strait Islanders, land, sea and culture are inseparable, and Traditional Owners and Rangers must continuously navigate between Western scientific frameworks and deeply held cultural knowledge grounded in lived experience.

The development of the 2026 Torres Strait State of Environment Report presented a unique opportunity to place First Nations knowledge, community priorities, and cultural values at the centre of how environmental health is understood and managed.

The goal was to create a community-level reporting approach that honours First Nations knowledge and lived experience, while enabling consistent and repeatable data collection to track changes over time, and aggregation to inform a regional picture. An Indigenous-led working group of Rangers and technical staff co-designed plain-language indicator questions aligned to 16 environmental and cultural values under the Torres Strait Land and Sea Management Strategy 2016–2036. A simple five-point scale (very bad to very good, including not applicable and unsure) supported consistent data collection and analysis.

Between July and December 2025, trained Rangers facilitated culturally safe workshops across 14 island communities, engaging more than 300 participants, often in local languages. This approach strengthened participation and community ownership by positioning Rangers as trusted facilitators. Median and mode were used to interpret this ordinal data (n = 351), with Rangers reviewing results to ensure they reflected local context and lived experience.

Results will inform the first Island Snapshots - two-page, accessible summaries highlighting condition, priority values, and key threats. Designed for periodic updates, these snapshots establish a repeatable baseline while guiding ranger workplans and supporting community-led decision-making and advocacy.

At the regional scale, community-derived data informed the inaugural Zenadth Kes Land and Sea Symposium, held in April 2026 on Waiben (Thursday Island). More than 70 Elders, Traditional Owners, Rangers, scientists, and decision-makers assessed condition, trend, and confidence for each value through facilitated discussions and anonymised polling. Community data and scientific evidence were considered together to generate agreed regional condition scores for the key values.

This two-way knowledge approach ensures science informs but does not override cultural authority. Together, island-scale reporting and regional synthesis provide both locally meaningful insights and a transparent evidence base for the SoE Report, supporting coordinated planning, investment, and long-term community-led management of Torres Strait Land, Seas, and People.