River and wetland health - protected wetlands and rivers

States and Territories have made significant progress in providing legislative protection for a large number of wetlands and some rivers with the definitive objective of preserving river/wetland health from a ‘naturalness' perspective. Protected wetlands and rivers are shown below:

Protected wetlands, rivers and river catchments - National

Australian wetlands and rivers with legislative protection for naturalness.

Download high resolution Maps:

• Protected wetlands, rivers and river catchments - National (3.9 Meg)

(these documents require the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader )

However, the maps of protect wetlands and rivers do not predict river/wetland health per se. Protection may also be provided by policies that may be more effective than legislation but that have not been assessed here because they are likely to be contingent on the government of the day.

AWR 2005 identifies 3833 rivers and wetlands, terrestrial areas and river catchments that are protected by legislation. This is an important initial step to provide a national picture of systems of high conservation value. Identified sites do not give an indication of river health per se, rather an indication of progress by states and territories in providing legislative protection.

Legislative protection of rivers from a 'naturalness' perspective has been introduced in some states.

Sourced by Colin Chartres

Victoria has the largest number of protected rivers (43) followed New South Wales (5) and other states/territories are yet to designate any. Both NSW and Western Australia have large numbers of coastal wetlands and lakes protected under state legislation. Apart from these rivers, national and state parks provide little protection for rivers in many cases, for example many are affected by ski resorts, damming, water diversions and inter-basin transfers.

The National Strategy for Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity, 1996 and the Environmental Protection of Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, 1999 are unlikely to be well served in most of Australia by the level of conservation protection afforded to rivers.

The state, territory and national conservation efforts for rivers and wetlands focus on principles of comprehensiveness, adequacy and representativeness. Complementarity or irreplaceability (selecting successive areas for greatest additional conservation benefit), condition (accounting for current state) and vulnerability (establishing risk of degradation allowing priority setting) are also important in conservation planning but these have not been implemented.

Interactive Maps:

Click on the links below to create and customise your own versions of the maps (e.g. add or remove layers) using the Map Maker tool on the Australian Natural Resource Atlas website:

• ANRA Map Maker - River and Wetland Health data

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