Protected Areas
The National Reserve System (NRS)
Objective 1.4 of the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity is to:
Establish and manage a comprehensive, adequate and representative system of protected areas covering Australia's biological diversity. To give effect to this, Australia is developing a national reserve system (NRS) as outlined in a new policy document, Directions for the National Reserve System – A Partnership Approach. The NRS program, initiated in 1996 and funded by the Natural Heritage Trust, meets the requirement under the National Strategy to establish a ‘comprehensive, adequate and representative’ (CAR) system of terrestrial protected areas. There is a separate program to establish marine protected areas.
The NRS program initially provided $85 million over 5 years to meet its objectives, and has now been extended for a further five years to 2007 under the second phase of the Natural Heritage Trust.
Key targets for the NRS program are:
Land acquisition by State and Territory conservation agencies.
Land acquisition for management by community groups.
Voluntary establishment of protected areas on private land.
Voluntary establishment of indigenous protected areas.
Development and implementation of best practice protected area management.
The fundamental principles which support the National Reserve System are:
Australian Guidelines for Establishing the National Reserve System
Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation of Australia (IBRA)
Directions for the National Reserve System - A Partnership Approach has been prepared to assist government agencies, non-government organisations and the community in the ongoing development of a CAR protected area system across Australia. In pursuit of a CAR system of protected areas the NRS:
aims to contain samples of all ecosystems identified at an appropriate regional scale;
aims to contain areas which are refugia or centres of species richness or endemism;
considers the ecological requirements of rare or threatened species and rare or threatened ecological communities and ecosystems, in particular those listed in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) and other State, Territory and local government legislation or policy instruments; and
accounts for special groups of organisms, e.g. species with specialised habitat requirements or wide-ranging or migratory species, or species vulnerable to threatening processes that may depend on reservation for their conservation.
Forest reserve system in Regional Forest Agreement areas
Regional Forest Agreements were an initiative of the National Forest Policy Statement. These Agreements cover the majority the production forest areas of Australia. A principle objective of a Regional Forest Agreement was to establish a world class reserve system based on nationally agreed principles and criteria (JANIS 1997)2. These included principles of comprehensiveness (covering the full range of forest communities across the landscape), adequacy (maintenance of ecological viability and integrity of populations, species and communities), and representativeness (biodiversity of forest communities reserved) is reasonably reflected across the landscape. Components of the reserve system included dedicated reserves (protected by legislation), informal reserves within approved management plans, protection of areas outside dedicated or informal reserves by codes of practice or management plans, and protection of areas on private lands by a range of voluntary strategies including conservation covenants.
Criteria for reserving key forest values involved setting area-based conservation targets. A target of fifteen percent of the pre-1750 distribution of each forest ecosystem was set for reservation in dedicated reserves. This compares favourably with a minimum of ten percent of biomes identified in the global target. A target of sixty percent of forest ecosystems recognised as vulnerable, and all remaining occurrences of rare and endangered forest ecosystems were to be reserved or protected by other means (as above), as far as practical. All viable examples of rare or depleted old-growth forest within a forest ecosystem were to be completely protected with a target of sixty percent of old-growth of other forest ecosystems. Ninety percent or more, if practicable, of the area of high quality wilderness that met minimum area requirements was to be protected in reserves.
These targets and biodiversity and heritage assessments on forest flora, fauna and ecosystems provided the basis for designing the reserve system in regional forest agreement areas.
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