Sonya Takau says dingoes are family to her Jirrbal people so cannot be harmed under customary lore.

She wants farmers to co-exist with the much-demonised canine rather than poison them.

Her north Queensland mob have an ancient relationship with the animal they call Ganibarra, says the dingo advocate.

Dingoes have helped them hunt, provided protection and are great water finders, Ms Takau tells AAP.

"Through the kinship system and our story, they are family.

"So the lore there is that we can't hurt them.

"Ganibarra are the bosses of Country; they keep everything in balance."

The dingo is among 22 case studies of "culturally significant entities" important to Indigenous people across Australia, in a National Environmental Science Project led by Curtin University.

They are generally protected within national parks and conservation areas but are shot, trapped or poisoned on sheep and cattle farms to protect livestock.

"I totally understand where farmers are coming from," Ms Takau says.

"They have to make a living.

"But we need to trial co-existence rather than lethal solutions."

The dingo has cultural significance for the Jirrbal people but is also important in the natural environment, suppressing invasive species such as foxes, cats, and feral pigs and goats.

The dingo control laws are all in aid of farmers but Indigenous people are major stakeholders in dingo management too, Ms Takau says.

"There are government-sanctioned killing programs.

"It's the government that sets the policy through legislation and when you look at that legislation there's no reflection of our cultural values whatsoever."

Some farmers are giving up on 1080 poison baiting of dingoes and looking at co-existing with them, Ms Takau says.

She notes there are non-lethal alternatives including relocation and use of guardian animals with sheep.

For the Bundjalung people of northeast NSW and southeast Queensland the coastal emu is also a culturally significant entity and they want more say in ensuring it again flourishes on their lands.

Oliver Costello, an advocate for the giant bird his people call Nguruny, is keen to explore innovative solutions to restore and protect emu populations on Bundjalung Country.

That could include farming along with breeding programs for reintroductions into the wild, and cultural burning to restore food sources and habitat for the species.

Selling emu meat products locally and hunting emu to keep skills and traditional knowledge alive could also be among the solutions, Mr Costello says.

The Curtin University study explored animals, plants and ecological communities vital to Indigenous cultural identity, knowledge systems and health of Country.

Such entities can be part of creation stories and songlines, serve as totems, provide food, medicine or materials, signal the health of ecosystems, or play roles in ceremony and customary practice.

Over 18 months researchers worked with 300 participants across six national workshops to develop case studies spanning Australia.

They included studies of dingoes, emus, freshwater mussels, green turtles, humpback whales, the Quandong fruit, Bogong moths, Brolga cranes, black cockatoos, Murray cod, sugarbag bees and the Macquarie Marshes.

The aim was to provide a pathway to embed Indigenous knowledge and governance into land and sea management, says Curtin's Dr Teagan Shields, who co-led the project with Professor Stephen van Leeuwen.

Recovery plans for the Great Desert Skink and the bilby, both involving significant Indigenous input, are examples to be followed by policy makers and legislators, Dr Shields tells AAP.

"Once they start to recognise the significance of these species to mob and that mob holds a lot of knowledge, that's really important to sustainably managing them; those recovery plans become much stronger,"

Australia has significant Indigenous-managed lands so having a focus on culturally important entities is an aid to manage Country, Dr Shields says.

Governments needed to shift from viewing Indigenous Australians as stakeholders to recognising them as rights-holders with cultural authority and responsibilities for Country.