Planning from the mountains to the sea: where do freshwater protected areas fit?
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Planning from the mountains to the sea: where do freshwater protected
areas fit?
Bob Pressey & Stephanie JanuchowskiAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence
for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University
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Integrated catchment management … we have a problem
• The need for difficult tradeoffs between diverse objectives and values
• Freshwater protected areas (in the broadest sense) have distinctive roles in integrated catchment management
• Freshwater protected areas are wrapped up in the tradeoff problem
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3. Ongoing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services
Defining the problem …
1. Diverse, spatially uncorrelated values (contributions to multiple objectives)
2. The need for incremental investments
Examples from the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef:
• Some extensive clearing still permitted
• Exemptions for small-scale clearing• Likely cryptic clearing by chemicals• Expansion of urban areas and related
infrastructure• Loss of terrestrial species from
patches of native vegetation due to isolation, fire, invasives
• Soil loss under grazing• Applications of fertilisers, pesticides
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The upshot (1 + 2 + 3) = managers must make hard choices
between diverse values
• Values that are not protected this year have a risk of being lost or degraded
• Choices about what to protect are also choices about what must be lost
• These choices involve mixing “apples and oranges” across diverse values
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Cleared headwaters:• Restoration to minimize soil loss• Control of sources of aquatic weeds• Best-practice land use for soil loss, chemicals, nutrients
Forested headwaters:• Retention of forest cover• Management of logging• Management of grazing, fire
Middle reaches with reduced riparian vegetation:• Restoration for riparian and instream biota• Restoration to reduce bank erosion• Fencing to exclude stock• Best-practice land uses
Lower floodplain:• Best-practice land uses to reduce pesticides, nutrients• Retention of intact wetlands• Restoration of floodplain forest
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Conclusions …
• Freshwater protection and restoration have several important roles
• Tradeoffs between freshwater and other activities, but also between different freshwater activities
• Managers need better tools to resolve these tradeoffs: explicit ways of making choices but also ways of understanding the implications of investing in different values in different ways