Adaptive Management of Malkumba-Coongie Lakes Ramsar Site in Arid Australia—A Free Flowing River and Wetland System

Abstract

The Malkumba-Coongie Lakes Ramsar Site has extensive terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems (largest Ramsar Site in Oceania, 2,178,952 ha, designated in 1987), including freshwater and salt lakes, lignum swamps and river channels in central Australia. It is supplied by Cooper Creek, a free-flowing Lake Eyre Basin river system. The area includes pastoral leases (97% of site grazed, including a regional conservation reserve (35%)) and a National Park (3%), with the largest oil and gas production field in Australia. We developed a Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM) Plan, linking science, monitoring and management of this social-ecological system, involving stakeholders and workshops. This involved developing a shared vision and hierarchy of objectives linked to management actions and identified outputs and outcomes. We exemplify this approach with explicit and measurable end-points (thresholds of potential concern) culminating from low level objectives for fish communities, particularly the alien sleepy cod Oxyeleotris lineolata. We describe this framework, highlighting the benefits in prioritizing management actions and monitoring in collaboration with a diverse range of stakeholders, driving adaptive feedback for learning. The whole approach is aimed at successfully achieving mutually agreed management objectives and the vision to maintain the ecological character of the Malkumba-Coongie Lakes Ramsar Site.

Oil and gas exploration and development in the Lake Eyre Basin: distribution and consequences for rivers and wetlands, including the Coongie Lakes Ramsar Site

“…Nevertheless, the potential impacts on the conservation of ecosystem services will be significant and threaten the Lake Eyre Basin's status as one of the world's great free-flowing rivers (Kingsford et al 2017b;Grill et al 2019) with its 33 nationally important wetlands (Fig. 1, Table S1), including the Ramsar-listed Coongie Lakes (Kingsford et al 2021b). The trajectory of this development has increased (Table 3, Fig.…”

“…In South Australia, much of the focus has been on protection and management of the large area included in the Coongie Ramsar Site, including Coongie Lakes National Park (Fig. 1, Kingsford et al 2021b). Under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act 1999), developments that potentially affect Ramsar Sites are deemed matters of national environmental significance, assessable as potential controlled actions.…”

Grand Challenges to Support the Freshwater Biodiversity Emergency Recovery Plan

“…These novel circumstances require careful development of explicit and realistic targets for the recovery of the system at project onset (Geist, 2011(Geist, , 2015Geist and Hawkins, 2016). A framing termed Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM) offers a structured step-wise process from development of a shared vision and hierarchy of objectives linked to management actions, monitoring, evaluation and publication of outcomes (Kingsford et al, 2021). It amply meets the criteria for measuring restoration and management success from an ecological perspective (Palmer et al, 2005) and provides a powerful model of effective stakeholder collaboration.…”

Development of a wetland management plan for Taiqu Saltpan, Taiwan, by stakeholder engagement and water gate operation

“…In the past several decades, attention has increased wordwide toward wetland conservation and management (Reis et al 2017, Xu et al 2019, Fois et al 2021, Kingsford et al 2021. Wetlands have substantial and significant influences on local and regional hydrology and should be considered important elements in the development and implementation of water management and policy strategies (Bullock and Acreman 2003).…”