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Freshwater Reserves in New South Wales, Australia - a Powerful but Unused Tool for Conserving Freshwater Biodiversity

Amy Hankinson and Stuart Blanch

Inland Rivers Network and Australian Conservation Foundation, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Theme: TH5

There are few working models of aquatic protected areas in freshwater ecosystems world-wide. Whilst the Fisheries Management Act 1994 (New South Wales, Australia) provides for aquatic reserves to 'enhance the protection of fish and fish habitat', and nearly one-third of the inland fish species are listed as threatened, no freshwater reserves have been declared. Freshwater reserves could be created in rivers and creeks to improve the capacity of government to rehabilitate degraded rivers, recover threatened species, or protect high conservation value areas. Freshwater reserves would arguably be principally a management tool for river rehabilitation rather than protecting 'pristine rivers', particularly for recovering threatened species and communities. Management actions could include enhanced protection of riparian vegetation, delivery of environmental flows, re-snagging, improved management of drainage from agricultural lands into the reserve, cessation of stocking of exotic fish, angling or boating restrictions. Potential reserve sites could be reaches of the Murray or Murrumbidgee Rivers to assist recovery of the about-to-be-listed endangered aquatic ecological community, on unregulated tributaries of regulated rivers, and unregulated rivers such as the Paroo.