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

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

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

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

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

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