No abstract

Coastal wetlands provide vital ecosystem services, including nutrient cycling, disaster risk reduction, and habitat for biodiversity, including shorebirds, seabirds, turtles and fish. How we design and implement policy approaches for the conservation of coastal wetlands and these ecosystem services matters enormously. This article joins a growing trend of literature that seeks to not only identify the importance of coastal wetlands, but also to consider how best to devise policy measures for their protection and restoration. The article focuses on Queensland’s coastal wetlands and suggests that the state has a real opportunity to become a national leader in wetland restoration. For that to occur, new legislative measures may be required to address issues such as tenure, land access, planning and risk management.

Coal seam gas mining in the Surat and Bowen Basins in Queensland, Australia, has developed rapidly over the past decade. Many landholders are concerned about the effects of the i ndustry on groundwater and agricultural resources and the weakness of official oversight, recently criticised by the Queensland Audit Office. Gas and water extraction is now extending under some of the most productive agricultural lands in Australia, the Darling Downs. Uncertainties remain as to the impacts of gas activities on aquifers. The water extracted along with the gas is often salty, and the method of disposing of the salts is a contentious, unresolved issue. The power imbalance between industry and landholders and weak regulation of industry hinders efforts by the in dustry to obtain a social licence. Governments have, to a large extent, neglected the region-wide and long-term effects of the mining. Extracting gas and water from the coal seams leaves depressurised zones, which lead to subsidence of the earth layers above the seam and leakage of aquifers into the coal seams with deleterious consequences for agricultural production. The statutory 'make good' process for compensating for loss of the aquifer water does not adequately offset the negative effects on the hydrological resources and on agricultural production. The prevailing self-regulation, lack of baseline assessment and inadequate monitoring of the mining processes are abrogations of government responsibility and the precautionary principle. As the industry is still ramping up, there is precious little time to protect agricultural land and the natural systems that underpin agriculture from potentially irrevocable damage.

The community of native species dependent on natural discharge of groundwater from the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) has been listed as a threatened ecological community under Australia's main environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (EPBC Act) since 2001. This paper introduces the ecological, cultural and legal context of spring management in Australia under the EPBC Act, and presents three ways that the community listing has advanced the conservation of GAB springs. First, listing provides heightened recognition and protection of the values of GAB spring communities. Second, it enables the protection of many species (the entire community) quickly. Third, it offers protection to a large, fragmented ecological community that would be difficult to protect solely by elements of the Australian protected area network, such as national parks and other types of national estate. The paper then highlights four complexities associated with the application of the EPBC Act to the management and conservation of GAB springs: the high level of discretion in decision making; data deficiencies that make it difficult to determine whether impacts are sufficiently "significant" to trigger assessment via an environmental impact statement (EIS); the flaws in offset management and mitigation measures; and the fact that community listings may not adequately protect individual species. A recent case study of the Doongmabulla Springs (central Queensland) illustrates how these legislative complexities were addressed under the requirements of the EPBC Act in relation to development of a major coal mine in their vicinity. The paper concludes with recommendations to enhance the capacity of the regulatory framework to conserve GAB spring species, communities and ecosystems.