ASFB Home > 2007 > Building a system of riverine protected areas across the Murray-Darling Basin

This presentation will give an overview of the report River Parks: Building a system of ‘Habitat Management Areas’ across the Murray-Darling. An international and national review of freshwater ‘protected areas’ for conserving aquatic biodiversity and river health. (by Bill Phillips and Rhonda Butcher, Publication No. 07/06.), as commissioned by the MDBC in 2005. It will also outline progress to date with followup work to assemble a GIS of ‘river parks’ across the Basin, and to assemble a ‘toolkit’; both of which are designed to assist practitioners.

The 2005 study identified many opportunities, and some impediments, to the establishment of a HMA system across the Basin. These opportunities and impediments are found at a range of levels, and across sectors; political, institutional, stakeholder, community and scientific. The strategy put forward in the report was designed to move this issue from the ‘too hard basket’ into the mainstream of river management for the Basin.

The 2005 report coined the term ‘river parks’ as a short-hand form for HMA or riverine ‘protected areas’; the latter term being used in its broadest sense (across all categories specified by the World Conservation Union – IUCN). The report highlighted that there are at present several tools available immediately for advancing the systematic development of a ‘river parks’ network for the Basin. These include Ramsar site or Biosphere reserves listings, heritage rivers, fish habitat reserves, State parks and reserves to protect biodiversity, through to demonstration reaches as championed by the Native Fish Strategy of the Basin. Despite these opportunities, there is no strategic framework or cohesive effort in place at present to see these various tools working toward establishment of a ‘river parks’ system.

Among the recommendations from the 2005 report which the MDBC has acted on are the development of an easy-to-use ‘toolkit’ spelling out how the various opportunities for advancing the ‘river parks’ agenda can be applied; their pluses and minuses etc. This ‘toolkit’ is soon to be subjected to review prior to finalisation in October.

The second part of this follow-up work is the drawing together into one GIS system, spatial information about the current state of affairs with respect to ‘river parks’ across the Basin. This aims to cover the following (where they contain aquatic elements) Ramsar listed wetlands, sites in the Directory of Important Wetlands; World heritage sites; sites on the register of the national estate, Biosphere reserves, sites of known importance to migratory waterbirds, Indigenous protected areas, sites listed under the EPBC Act as threatened ecological communities or where listed (aquatic) species are found, sites recognised under State or ACT (biodiversity) legislation, State/ACT parks and reserves of all forms, wild of heritage-listed rivers, areas/reserves declared under State fisheries legislation and demonstration reaches. Once this GIS is assembled (which is proving challenging !) the intention is to document the current ‘river parks’ estate of the Basin and then seek to identify key gaps for priority attention.