River Symposium, Brisbane, August 2001

River Symposium, Brisbane, August 2001.

Representative freshwater reserves:
better late than never: - the role and importance of representative inland aquatic protected areas

Jon Nevill (Only One Planet) and Ngaire Phillips (NIWA Australia)

28 August 2001

1.Abstract

Representative reserves (protected areas) are an accepted component of terrestrial and marine biodiversity conservation programs. Additionally, representative reserves have important values in protecting ecosystems of special importance, and in providing ecologically-based benchmarks useful in assessing the sustainability of management programs. However, in spite of international and national commitments, Australian State governments have been slow to establish systems of representative reserves in freshwater environments.

A central recommendation involves the establishment of agreed national methods for the classification of freshwater ecosystems into (‘representative’) categories which can be incorporated into a comprehensive national inventory. A second key recommendation involves the development of a national approach to identifying gaps in the existing reserve system relating specifically to freshwater ecosystems.

2.Introduction

2.1 Representative reserves

The term “protected areas” is preferred to “reserves” in general use; however the shorter “reserves” is used throughout this paper for the sake of brevity. “Reserves” has a variety of restrictive and legal connotations which can confuse lay readership. The term here is used to mean a defined area subject to a particular management regime designed to protect the area’s ecosystems from threats. The longer phrase “protected areas” thus is more self-explanatory, less threatening, and is in line with international IUCN usage.

In arguing for the establishment of systems of representative freshwater reserves, we are not suggesting that these reserves are all that is necessary to protect freshwater biodiversity: far from it. As discussed below, the protection of biodiversity rests on two central platforms: the establishment of special areas to protect representative examples of ecosystems, AND programs to protect biodiversity values across the general landscape. This second platform includes both programs to protect natural values within managed ecosystems (the installation of fishways on weirs and dams, for example), as well as special purpose reserves to protect wilderness, recreational, scenic, cultural or commercial values.

Representative reserves are areas selected to protect representative examples of natural ecosystems, features or phenomena. They are established for the:

• protection of biodiversity through preservation of representative examples of ecosystems, and protection of the species and genotypes which depend on that ecosystem;
• protection of threatened ecological communities and species;
• preservation of unique, rare or outstanding botanical, zoological or geological phenomena;
• the establishment of ecological benchmarks by which to evaluate long-term changes in ecosystems subject to intensive modification (eg: through water abstraction, or the harvesting of plants or animals);
• protection of important landscape, wilderness, recreational, scientific, cultural and educational values and uses associated with the natural environment, to the extent that such activities are compatible with other objectives.

The development of comprehensive, adequate and representative reserves in terrestrial environments is relatively well established. This terminology[1] (and the process behind it) is currently being applied to the marine environment, driven primarily by concerns relating to the protection of biodiversity, and encompassing related secondary objectives (see discussion below).

Although most Australian States have made policy-level commitments to establish systems of representative freshwater reserves, these commitments, for the most part, have not been implemented (see discussion below).

With growing emphasis on biodiversity conservation and sustainable management, the concept of representative freshwater reserves is becoming increasingly relevant. Moreover, the continuing degradation of most of the nation's freshwater ecosystems makes the concept both more relevant and more urgent.

2.2Scope

The scope of the discussion paper includes all inland wetlands using the Ramsar Convention definition of “wetland”. This definition[2] (in brief) encompasses both fresh and saline, flowing and still, and surface and subterranean ecosystems. In other words, the discussion paper covers rivers, lakes, wetlands (using the more limited definition of wetlands current in Australia), aquifers and karst systems, and estuaries whose ecosystems are significantly dependent on inflow from rivers, streams and aquifers.

3.Terrestrial reserves

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.

3.1Commonwealth and State responsibilities

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.

3.2Historical 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.

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”.

3.3Growth of concerns over gaps in the reserve system

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]

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.

3.4Representative 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. The International Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 (which Australia ratified in 1993) committed Australia to the development of systems of representative reserves in terrestrial and aquatic environments.

This vision was incorporated into commitments contained in a number of major intergovernmental statements and policies, including:

• 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)

In response to these national and international commitments, in 1992 the Commonwealth Government established the National Reserves System Program (NRSP). 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).

3.5The IBRA regionalisation framework

The NRSP utilises the national Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia[3] (IBRA) - a framework developed in cooperation with the States and Territories (under the auspices of ANZECC) - to determine priority regions and ecosystems for reservation. The principle lying behind the selection of IBRA regions is the recognition that ecosystems depend largely on geology, landform, vegetation and climate, mediated by community succession, fire, and of course the impact of human activities[4]. IBRA regions, then, are derived substantially 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.

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. Finer scale analyses are required in developing a regionalisation framework suited particularly to freshwater ecosystems.

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.

3.6Terrestrial 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[5]. 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.

4.Marine 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 with the result that marine conservation issues remained low-profile with both politicians and conservation lobby groups.

4.1Marine reserves: the Great Barrier Reef

Up until the start of the 1990s, Australia had only one major marine reserve. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, declared in 1975, is the world’s largest marine protected area, covering some 345 000 sq.km. The marine park was established to provide for the ongoing protection, wise use, understanding and enjoyment of the reef. The marine park provides for all reasonable uses and contains within its boundaries a number of significant industries, in particular tourism, recreation and commercial fishing. All sections of the marine park have zoning plans, which define different zones in the marine park and describe how each zone may be used.

4.2Development of strategic reserve planning

Marine waters, and in fact adjacent coastal areas, are subject to degradation through un-coordinated incremental development. This includes harvesting operations which can have both direct impacts (through overharvesting of target species and bycatch) and indirect effects (through damage to habitat by nets and dredges). Indirect effects from land-based coastal developments can also cause major degradation of estuarine and marine environments through pollution and direct destruction of marine habitats, such as mangroves, saltmarsh and seagrass. Developments within broader catchments which result in increasing silt loads in rivers, or changes in aquifer outflow rates to marine environments can also cause significant and long-term damage. The cumulative effects of incremental development have remained unchecked without strategic planning frameworks which take the needs of coastal waters into account: the mechanisms of the tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968) and the tyranny of small decisions (Odum 1982) both apply[6].

In 1991 the Commonwealth Government initiated its Ocean Rescue 2000 Program. A central aim of this program was to introduce strategic planning concepts to the marine environment. The InterGovernmental Agreement on the Environment (1992) contained a commitment to develop this strategic approach, with the establishment of representative marine protected areas a key component of this commitment. This commitment has been actioned through the National Reserve System for Marine Protected Areas (NRSMPA) Program, funded substantially through the Natural Heritage Trust.

The development of a systematic strategy for the selection of MPAs, similar to terrestrial approaches, has been relatively recent and has often followed concepts developed for terrestrial systems. For example, as for terrestrial systems, the concept of creating a system of representative reserves gained support as a broad basis for the conservation of marine habitats and species (Gubbay 1988; Ray & McCormick-Ray 1992; Brunckhorst 1994). In Australia, creating a system of representative MPAs based on a biogeographic classification is one of the goals of the Ocean Rescue 2000 Program. However, development of the Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation for Australia (Thackway & McRae 1995) has followed, rather than paralleled, its terrestrial counterpart. [ Pressey and McNeil 1996:1]

4.3The Oceans Policy

The Commonwealth Government published Australia’s Oceans Policy in 1998 to provide for the protection, ecologically sustainable use and management of marine areas under Commonwealth control. The National Oceans Office is the lead Commonwealth agency for implementing the Oceans Policy. Echoing the earlier thrust of the 1991 Oceans Rescue 2000 Program, strategic planning is central to the 1998 policy. At the core of the policy is a move to integrated and ecosystem-based planning and management which will be binding on all Commonwealth agencies and will be delivered through the development of Regional Marine Plans based on large marine ecosystems. While the policy does not bind State jurisdictions, the Commonwealth seeks to encourage the development of strategic planning over State waters through cooperative agreements and funding arrangements. Development of the National Reserve System of Marine Protected Areas is a key component of these arrangements.

4.4National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas

The development of the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas

(NRSMPAs) was endorsed by Australian Governments under the InterGovernmental Agreement on the Environment. There are commitments by all Australian Governments to its establishment in key strategies such as the National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (1992) and the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity (1996) [Australia's Oceans Policy 1998:Appendix 4].

4.4.1Goals of the NRSMPA:

The primary goal of the NRSMPA[7] is to establish and manage a comprehensive, adequate and representative system of MPAs to contribute to the long-term ecological viability of marine and estuarine systems, to maintain ecological processes and systems, and to protect Australia’s biological diversity at all levels.