Counting Australia's protected rivers

Australia is committed to protecting its important and representative ecosystems. Foremost among protection measures is the network of terrestrial and marine protected areas that comprise the National Reserve System (NRS). However, these reserves were often established with little regard for the conservation needs of riverine ecosystems. There has been no conservation status assessment to determine whether riverine ecosystems are adequately protected within terrestrial reserves. This study begins this task by determining the extent of riverine protection through the NRS. Three classes of protection are defined based on the proportion of the catchment of each stream segment (the link between tributary confluences) that is contained within a protected area, and the presence of major in-stream barriers. The analysis reveals cause for concern. While nearly 225000km (7.6%) of the 2.9million kilometres of streams assessed fall within a protected area of IUCN class I to IV where the principal objective is nature conservation, just 12334km of stream, less than half of one per cent of the total stream length, receives Class A protection, the strongest level of protection against threat. Class A is achieved where an entire drainage basin is contained within a protected area. Most of the protected stream length of the larger, named streams is potentially threatened by land-use activities occurring in unprotected headwaters or is fragmented by major dams and thus receives the lowest class of protection. Owing to a variety of pervasive threats, a more comprehensive conservation status assessment of these ecosystems would undoubtedly yield an even more pessimistic result. Such an assessment is recommended.