Western Australian Wetlands the Kimberley and South-West

Western Australian Wetlands The Kimberley and South-West Edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb Black Swan Press Wetlands Conservation Society (Inc.) 1996 First publisht~~6 by Black Swan Press School of Communication and Cultural Studies Curtin University of Technology GPO Box U1987 Perth Western Australia 6001 and the Wetlands Conservation Society (Inc.) Copyright© individual contributors 1996 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data Western Australian wetlands: the Kimberley and south-west ISBN 1 86342 499 7 1. Wetlands- Western Australia- Kimberley. 2. Wetlands Western Australia- South-West. 3. Wetland conservation Western Australia- Kimberley. 4. Wetland conservation Western Australia- South-West. I. Gibiett, Rodney James. II. Webb, Hugh, 1941-. III. Wetlands Conservation Society. IV. Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (1971). 333.91809941 Printed by Lamb Print A Lotteries Commission initiative . ~ ALCOA AUSTRALIA LOTTERIES COMMISSION• A Decade of Wetland Conservation in Western Australia Philip Jennings, Wetlands Conservation Society (Inc.) The Setting Few people in Western Australia and fewer still beyond its borders would realize that such an arid State possesses such a vast wealth of wetlands. Only in comparatively recent times have we begun to appreciate the extent of our wetland heritage and its ecological significance. Permanent fresh water lakes are rare in W A, except in the Kimberley and South-West regions where regular heavy rainfall produces high water tables. However, throughout the rest of the State there are many seasonal wetlands and many large salt lakes. All wetlands are important because they are amongst the most productive of all biological systems. They support a vast range of wildlife, both aquatic and terrestrial. Western Australia lies on one of the main international bird migration routes, usually referred to as the east-Asian flyway. The WA section consists of a chain of lakes, swamps, estuaries and tidal marshes stretching from the Ord River delta and Lake Argyle in the north to the vast fresh water expanses of Lake Muir and Lake Warden in the south. It supports a huge population of migratory birds, some of which travel from as far away as Siberia and Manchuria. There are literally thousands of wetlands in this system which, besides supporting migratory birds, also sustain a diverse local flora and fauna. No two wetlands are identical and even within a small geographical region we find variation based on soils, landforms and water quality. Over a large State, like WA, we have additional variation due to climate and evolutionary history. Although our Government has seen fit to nominate only nine of W A's wetlands for Ramsar listing, there are at least another ten wetlands which are worthy of Ramsar listing and thousands of others which should be listed on the Register of the National Estate. Origins The appreciation of wetlands developed slowly in the western world. The pioneer settlers in W A failed to appreciate the superb biological heritage of this region. Instead they sought to tame and subdue it. They saw the wetlands as impediments to development and as sources of disease and insect pests. Most of the wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain and in the South West Agricultural Area were drained, cleared or damaged within a century of European settlement. By 1980 it was estimated that 80% of the wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain had been totally destroyed (Fisheries and Wildlife 1978). The situation in the Agricultural Region was even worse because salinity, caused by overclearing, has destroyed or damaged almost all of the original wetlands (EPA 1994b). The original European settlers sought to transform the natural landscape into a more familiar form and so they cleared the fringing vegetation along the rivers and wetlands and replanted with grass and exotic trees. Some of the smaller swamps near Perth were 'saved' as ornamental ponds in traditional settings such as Queens Gardens and Hyde Park. These wetlands were usually dredged and contoured and completely transformed. In the process their ecological values were destroyed. Few people questioned the destruction of the wetlands 149 until the worldwide awakening of environmental consciousness in the sixties. Through the efforts of a few pioneering thinkers such as Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and E. F. Schumacher, people gradually became aware of the beauty of nature and the . value of biodiversity. Eventually they came to accept that wetlands had an important role to play in nature conservation. In the sixties, conservation groups such as the Naturalists Oub and the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union began to argue the case for wetland conservation and some of the bureaucrats began to listen. During the seventies action was taken to develop a representative system of nature reserves in W A and wetlands were included in these studies. However, initially the focus was on protecting outstanding individual wetlands rather than whole systems. One of the first environmental campaigns of this era occurred in 1961, when Bessie Rischbieth and a group known as the Swan River Protection Society, tried to prevent the filling of Mounts Bay for the Narrows Bridge interchange. Their pleas fell on deaf ears and so they eventually confronted the bulldozers in a symbolic protest by the riverside at the foot of Mt Eliza. Although the protest failed to stop the work, the Government made a minor concession by landscaping the interchange and constructing artificial wetlands in the cloverleaf. The whole site was beautified and planted with lawns and exotic trees. The Government of that time simply failed to understand the message. Nevertheless, this incident demonstrated increased public concern for the natural environment and for wetlands in particular. Later, in 1967 the Conservation Council of Western Australia was formed as an alliance of conservation groups. The Council led the campaign for the establishment of the Environmental Protection Authority (which occurred in 1972) and for the creation of a comprehensive system of national parks and nature reserves. In response to this campaign the Government established the Conservation Through Reserves Committee (CTRC) in 1972 with the task of creating a reserve system from existing Governmentlandholdings. The Committee surveyed the whole State and published a set of twelve 'Red Books' containing their recommendations for conservation reserves. This approach was not comprehensive as it· focussed pragmatically on crown land and thus avoided the difficult questions of compensation and funding for land purchases (EPA 1991). As a result of the CTRC Reports many new reserves were created and the area of the State set aside for conservation increased from less than 2% in 1970 to more than 6% in 1990 (EPA 1992c). In the process of assessing Government land for conservation, the value of wetlands was recognised for the first time by Government in WA. The EPA set up a Wetlands Advisory Committee in the late seventies and it provided advice to the CTRC on wetland reserves in the System Six Area, especially the Swan Coastal Plain (DCE 1979). As a result of their work the System Six Red Book (1983) contains a long list of important wetlands which were recommended for conservation (DCE 1983). The implementation of the System Six Report has proved to be difficult because of conflicting land uses, particularly urban development and agriculture. Consequently, more than a decade after the release of the System Six Report, less than 75% of its recommendations have been implemented (EPA 1993c). A similar problem exists in Systems 1 and 2 in the South-West Region where traditional European land uses have impeded efforts to conserve wetlands. The System 5 area, on the coastal plain from the Moore River to the Irwin, contains many important wetlands but very few of these were recommended for conservation because the EPA had failed to appreciate the importance of 150 Artificial wetlands, K win ana Freeway Main Roads Department 151 Len and Doreen Howard, Peel Preservation Group Philip Jennings/Wetlands Conservation Society 152 these wetlands for bird breeding and migration when the Study was done in 1975. Similarly the System 7 Study for the Kimberley region missed the opportunity to recommend the conservation of large areas of wetland because of concerns about objections from pastoralists. Rising Public Concern During the CTRC process in the 1970's public concern was growing about wetland conservation. Herdsman Lake was saved from its intended fate as a rubbish dump but other important wetlands such as Alfred Cove and Bibra Lake were used for this purpose. Conservationists participated actively in the CTRC process and lobbied for wetland conservation as part of the study. However, wetland abuse still continued and during the sixties and seventies the Leschenault Inlet was polluted by effluent from a mineral-processing plant and the Peel-Harvey estuary system began to collapse through eutrophication caused by excessive fertilizer use by farmers in the catchment. In 1977 Len Howard and John Devereaux formed the Peel Preservation Group (PPG) with the aim of campaigning for the conservation of the Peel-Harvey-Yalgorup wetland system. This significant chain of coastal wetlands streches over more than 100 kilometres from Myalup north ofBunbury, to Mandurah. It includes two large estuaries fed by the Serpentine, Murray and Harvey Rivers and two large saline lakes, Clifton and Preston. It is the most important wetland system in south-western Australia and it supports a large and diverse population of wildlife. Because of its size it has many problems caused by human activities including eutrophication, drainage, clearing, tourism and urban development. Over the years the PPG has campaigned tirelessly for the protection of these wetlands and their efforts have been rewarded with considerable success. One of the first successes in wetland conservation occurred in 1982 when a dispute broke out over a plan by the State Housing Commission to fill and develop part of Star Swamp, near North Beach, for housing.

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