“…State and Federal government resource management agencies have had various administrative regions but, in recent decades, attempts have been made to extend this to decision-making bodies based on river catchments (e.g., Cunningham, 1986). Generally, however, these frameworks for resource governance have not achieved effective engagement, integration or action (Omernik and Bailey, 1997;Knight and Landres, 1998;Reeve, 1998;Parisi et al, 2004). They often seem to produce plans that few are interested in implementing, that have been 'captured' by single interests (not representative; small proportion engaged or participating) or that split inter-related issues into multiple single-issue frameworks (e.g., vegetation In recognising the need for a basic 'holistic' region to integrate community interests with ecological characteristics, this project focused on developing a method to identify boundaries that met the three primary expectations of such regional frameworks for more effective resource governance.…”