4.Reserves in terrestrial and marine environments

Reserves specifically dedicated to protecting freshwater environments are rare in Australia - and around the world. Most of the major sites which do exist have been established partly by States moving to meet commitments made under the Ramsar Convention (discussed in more detail below). Reserves specifically dedicated to protecting representative freshwater ecosystems are rarer still. To understand why this is the case, and to predict future trends, it is important to obtain a brief historical overview of the establishment of reserves in terrestrial and marine environments.

The following sections outline the growth of the concept of representative reserves – on land and at sea – in the Australian context. This section borrows heavily from the work of Richard Thackway and Robert Pressey(square brackets are used below to acknowledge paragraph quotes).

4.1Terrestrial reserves

4.1.1Responsibilities

Under the Australian Constitution, the primary responsibility for land management lies with the State and Territory governments. Most of Australia's terrestrial protected areas, therefore, have been identified and selected, and subsequently declared and managed, by the State and Territory nature conservation agencies. Only three terrestrial protected areas on mainland Australia have been declared under Commonwealth legislation in response to national and international concerns regarding these areas' outstanding natural and cultural values. These protected areas are declared and managed by the Commonwealth in partnership with the traditional owners of these estates. [Thackway 1996:1].

4.1.2Historical perspective

A century ago, Australia was at the forefront of efforts to protect special terrestrial places. The first national parks in the world were created in the USA (Yellowstone National Park in 1872) and in Australia (Royal National Park, 1879). For the next one hundred years, reservations were primarily driven by desire to protect the beauty of special natural environments, the inspirational values of wilderness, recreational resources, landscapes of particular cultural significance, or other smaller sites of special scientific importance or perceived fragility. It is perhaps not surprising that purpose of the USA Wild and Scenic Rivers Act 1968 is to protect the recreational and landscape values of wild rivers, not their biodiversity.

Australia was no exception to this general rule, with the result that, by the end of the 1960’s, Australia had a variety of large parks in rugged, infertile areas, but comparatively few reserves covering arable grasslands, fertile woodlands, or forests with high timber value. Parks and reserves had grown essentially by ad hoc and opportunistic acquisitions, often driven by parochial political pressures. It is important to acknowledge, however, that many important sites were protected in this way.

However, as Pressey and McNeil (1996) point out, “ad hoc decisions have serious practical disadvantages. One is that, in Australia and many other parts of the world, they have led to the secure protection of areas least threatened by processes that reserves are good at preventing (Pressey 1994, 1995). In north-eastern New South Wales, for example, reserves are concentrated in the steepest, least fertile environments, even though an overall reserved area of 7% of the region might at first sound impressive” (Figure 1).

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Figure 1: Reservation of land in north-eastern New South Wales in relation to slope and fertility

Note: The vertical axis indicates the percentage of land in each of the slope and fertility classes that is reserved; S1 - steep slopes, S2 - moderate slopes, S3 - flat or gentle slopes; F1 - low fertility, F2 - moderate fertility, F3 - high fertility (from Pressey 1995).

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Before the 1960s most protected areas in Australian jurisdictions were identified and selected by knowledgeable individuals and recreation interest groups whose recommendations were supported by government boards or committees. Early reserve recommendations usually had a local focus. By the mid-1960s this began to change with the widespread use of small-scale aerial photography and environmental maps, and as reconnaissance-scale biological survey data became generally available. Small-scale maps of surficial geology, climatic maps and vegetation maps provided ecologically meaningful surrogates as a basis for surveying biological communities (Myers & Thackway 1988). The use of these information sets provided the opportunity to develop more systematic approaches for identifying and selecting protected areas which sample the wide range of ecosystem types. [Thackway 1996:2]

4.1.3Growth of concerns over gaps in the reserve system

In the late sixties and early seventies, increasing concern amongst nature conservation professionals led to examinations of the degree to which ecosystems (often using major plant communities as ecosystem surrogates) were protected. A review of the representativeness of Australia's reserves was undertaken by the Australian Academy of Science in 1968; this showed that, while each State and Territory had established systems of protected areas, they were not representative of the ecosystems of Australia.

The first national systematic approach to identifying gaps in the representation of ecosystems within protected areas was initiated by the Australian Academy of Science as part of the Australian contribution to the International Biological Programme (Specht et al. 1974). As a result, Specht (1975) recommended that at least one large sample of each major ecosystem in each biogeographic division of each State should be incorporated into an ecological reserve, either by designating the whole or part of existing national parks and other nature conservation reserves as ecological reserves or, where necessary, by acquisition of land. . [Thackway 1996:2]

The need to establish ecological reference areas in undisturbed samples of major ecosystems resulted the passage of Victoria’s Reference Areas Act in 1978. The Commonwealth initiated the Register of the National Estate in the late 1970’s[i], encompassing both natural and cultural places

At the international level, Australia made a commitment to the development of systems of representative ecological reserves in 1982, when Australian representatives at the United Nations supported the World Charter for Nature, a resolution of the General Assembly of the UN in October of that year. The reservation of representative examples of all ecosystems – terrestrial, marine and freshwater – was an important tenet of the Charter.

During the 1980s there was a considerable expansion in the respective systems of protected areas, both in terms of the number of reserves and the total area managed for nature conservation (see Bridgewater & Shaughnessy 1994; Thackway 1996). While this rapid expansion would appear to be effective for the conservation of biodiversity, most of the growth of these systems tended to include areas for their spectacular scenery, value for recreation, or special features, for example, areas comprising the 'taller, greener, and wetter' end of the ecosystem spectrum (see Thackway & Cresswell 1995a). During this period, four jurisdictions - Queensland (see Sattler 1986), Tasmania (Tasmanian Working Group for Forest Conservation 1990), Victoria (see Land Conservation Council 1988) and Western Australia (McKenzie 1994) - developed systematic ecosystem-based approaches which had as their goal the representation of typical examples of the environments/ecosystems in conservation reserves. [Thackway 1996:2]

4.1.4Representative reserves: a national perspective

By the 1990s there was widespread recognition that the existing State and Territory systems of protected areas had developed largely in isolation from each other, with a variety of operational goals, using various scale data and information, and using a variety of approaches for identifying and selecting protected areas.

The vision to develop a national system of reserves which sampled the wide range of ecosystems was supported by all nature conservation agencies, many conservation-based non-government organisations and the wider community. It was also demonstrated in a number of major intergovernmental statements and policies, including the 1991 draft National Strategy for the Conservation of Endangered Species (ANZECC, in prep), the 1992 InterGovernmental Agreement on the Environment (Commonwealth of Australia 1992a) the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement (Commonwealth of Australia 1992b), the 1992 National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (Commonwealth of Australia 1992c), and the 1996 National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity (Commonwealth of Australia 1996). In addition, in 1992 a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment, Recreation and the Arts inquiry into the role of protected areas in the maintenance of biodiversity identified the need for a systematic approach for planning the National Reserve System for Australia (HoRSCERA 1993). In its final report, HoRSCERA recommended the development of a nationally consistent bioregional planning framework for planning the National Reserve System. [Thackway 1996:3]

The Australian Government was one of the first to ratify the international Convention on Biological Diversity[ii] when it was opened for signature in June 1992. The convention introduced the phrase “comprehensive, adequate and representative” (CAR) reserves. This phrase has now been incorporated into all major Australian biodiversity programs.

In response to these national and international commitments, in 1992 the Commonwealth Government established the National Reserves System Cooperative Program (NRSCP). The goal of that program was to establish the National Reserve System by the year 2000, in cooperation with the State and Territory nature conservation agencies (Keating 1992).

4.1.5The IBRA framework

The NRSP utilises the national Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia[iii] (IBRA) - a framework developed in cooperation with the States and Territories (under the auspices of ANZECC) - to determine priority regions and ecosystems for reservation. Within the IBRA framework, the NRSP encourages States and Territories to address CAR principles in establishing a national system of protected areas. Within these limits, the NRSP is concerned with all types of ecosystems[iv].

The principle lying behind the selection of IBRA regions is the recognition that ecosystems depend largely on geology, landform and climate, mediated by community succession, fire, and of course the impact of human activities[v]. IBRA regions, then, are derived principally from geomorphology, as are sub-regions which most often use land system mapping as the basis for their derivation. Not surprisingly, the boundaries of major catchments feature in the definition of many IBRA regions.

The reservation of sites solely on the basis of geology or geomorphic values has not yet been recognised as part of IBRA, and such sites are only picked up indirectly.

Freshwater ecosystems are not adequately addressed in the broad-scale IBRA analyses. This is a result of the importance of fine-scale geomorphic variations in determining the structure and function of freshwater ecosystems - and the fact that the primary focus of ecosystem and vegetation mapping in many States has been on terrestrial floristic variation as the basis for differentiating between ecosystems and communities. Some States, such as Victoria, include a geomorphic component in the delineation of vegetation and ecosystem type, but finer scale analyses are required in developing a regionalisation framework suited particularly to freshwater ecosystems.

In summary, the IBRA framework was developed to assist the NRSP, and State governments, in identifying gaps in the developing system of representative terrestrial reserves. Its target is to develop and categorise biodiversity surrogates at the highest useful level. By necessity, it involves broad-scale amalgamations of information on geomorphology, geology, vegetation, climate and soil type. In its current form it represents extremely useful categorisations of habitat at the landscape and regional level. IBRA regions, for the most part, contain similar assemblages of terrestrial ecosystems. The recognition that geomorphology, to a lesser or greater extent, includes information on drainage formations is vital in understanding the relevance of the IBRA framework in relation to freshwater ecosystems. However, the IBRA framework provides no more than a useful base for categorising freshwater ecosystems, as it does not include information on hydrology, and the scale at which it has been developed is at least an order of magnitude above the scale necessary for categorising rivers, and most lakes and wetlands.

Marine reserves are supported under a different program run by the Commonwealth Oceans Office. Marine areas are targeted for protected area status based on the related Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation for Australia (IMCRA) which uses a similar broad-scale ecosystem-based approach (see discussion below).

4.1.6Regional Forest Agreements

The task of identifying and selecting representative forest ecosystems was developed under a separate arrangement between the Commonwealth, State and Northern Territory governments (see Commonwealth of Australia 1992b; Commonwealth of Australia 1995). This program is known as the Regional Forest Agreements (RFA) Program, and was initiated in the Commonwealth Forest Policy Statement in 1992. A central element of the RFA program is an objective to establish a CAR[vi] reserve system which, to the greatest practical extent, protects a target of 15% of each major forest ecosystem[vii] (using major vegetation communities as an ecosystem surrogate) existing at the time of European colonisation of Australia.

4.1.7Funding the National Reserves System

The policy of the current Commonwealth Government, in Saving our natural heritage - Policies for a Coalition Government 1996, has established a $1 billion Natural Heritage Trust of Australia, a funding program devoted to protecting and rehabilitating Australia's natural environment (Coalition Party 1996). As part of that program, $80 million over four years has been made available to develop a National Reserve System as agreed by the States and the Commonwealth in the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity (Commonwealth of Australia 1996).

The establishment of the National Reserve System (NRS) Program under the Natural Heritage Trust meets the requirement under the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity to establish a comprehensive, adequate and representative system of terrestrial protected areas. There is a separate program to establish marine protected areas (discussed below). The national objectives of the National Reserve System Program are – through working with all levels of government, industry and the community - to:

  • establish and manage new ecologically significant protected areas for addition to Australia's terrestrial National Reserve System;
  • provide incentives for Indigenous people to participate in the National Reserve System through voluntary declaration of protected areas on their lands and support for greater involvement of indigenous people in the management of existing statutory protected areas;
  • provide incentives for landholders (both private landholders and leaseholders) to strategically enhance the National Reserve System; and
  • develop and implement best practice standards for the management of Australia's National Reserve System.

4.1.8Terrestrial reserves in summary

The development of systems of representative freshwater reserves needs to be understood in light of the development of representative reserves in terrestrial and marine environments.

The creation of terrestrial reserves preceded the creation of marine reserves by around one hundred years. Freshwater reserves, in their own right, have been an even more recent development[viii]. For most of the last century, terrestrial reserves were created for a variety of reasons, and were mostly established by ad hoc or opportunistic pressures. Even though Australia made an international commitment to the establishment of representative ecosystem reserves 20 years ago, it is only in the last 10 years that most nature conservation agencies have embraced the goal of representing the wide range of ecosystems within each jurisdiction in a system of protected areas.

Within the Australian context, both Commonwealth and State governments are now firmly committed to the establishment of systems of representative terrestrial reserves, and these programs have now been funded for the best part of a decade.

Given the slow start that these programs have had, it is understandable that priority has been given to planning at the regional and landscape level. However, these broad-scale programs are now sufficiently well established, we argue, for matters of finer detail to be considered - such as freshwater ecosystems.

It is true that existing systems of terrestrial reserves protect many important freshwater ecosystems. Probably the most impressive example is provided by the World Heritage Area in the Southwest of Tasmania, where the two most westerly of the State’s nine IBRA regions are substantially protected, including their small and medium-sized waterways (some of the larger waterways are degraded by hydroelectric developments). Similar comments regarding the protection of small rivers, lakes, wetlands and aquifers can be made for most other very large terrestrial reserves. Moreover, in some States (see the discussion of the South Australian program below) reserve acquisition programs are now targeting wetland acquisitions.

However, as no comprehensive evaluation has been carried out by any Australian jurisdiction to assess the degree to which freshwater ecosystems are in fact represented in existing reserves, it must be said that the commitments[ix] made by Australian State governments (discussed in more detail below) have not been met.

We believe that Australian nature conservation programs are now at the point where consideration needs to be re-directed toward programs to protect ecosystems at a finer scale. Given the continuing and intractable decline of freshwater ecosystems over much of the Australian continent, it is now urgent that the development of representative freshwater reserves no be elevated, nationwide, to the highest priority.

4.2Marine reserves

The development of marine reserves has lagged behind terrestrial reserves by about a century, partly due to the incorrect perception that the sea was so vast it seemed improbable that humans could cause significant long-term degradation. In addition, damage which was occurring was invisible to most of the community (who, of course, make up most of the voters) with the result that marine conservation issues remained low-profile with both politicians and conservation lobby groups.

On first consideration, the differences between the terrestrial and marine realms are enormous, both physically and biologically. The complex system of currents, waves and tides that operates in the ocean, combined with the dispersive larval phase common in the life history of many marine organisms, have led to marine environments being considered more open, operating at larger spatial scales, and having a greater degree of connectedness than terrestrial systems. By comparison with terrestrial habitats, therefore, habitats in marine environments are seen as less strictly or critically defined, boundaries between them are rarely precise or restricted, geographic ranges of organisms are often very large, and endemism is rare (Kenchington 1990; Fairweather & McNeill 1993; Jones & Kaly 1995). Because of such differences, the application of well-tested, land-based theories of reserve selection and design have been considered by some to be inappropriate for marine systems (e.g. Kenchington 1990) [ Pressey and McNeil 1996:1].