The Management and Extent of the National Reserve System
Submission to the Senate Inquiry on Australia’s faunal extinction crisis The management and extent of the National Reserve System
National Environmental Science Program Threatened Species Recovery (TSR) Hub The Threatened Species Recovery Hub (TSR Hub) includes projects investigating the effectiveness of reserves for threatened species conservation and recovery. The authors of this submission include many of the people leading this research. Authors: Professor John Woinarski (TSR Hub Theme Leader, Charles Darwin University), Professor Brendan Wintle (TSR Hub Director, University of Melbourne and University of Queensland), Dr Heini Kujala (TSR Hub Senior Research Fellow, University of Melbourne), Dr Heather Keith (TSR Hub Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University), ARC Laureate Professor David Lindenmayer (TSR Hub Theme Leader, Australian National University), Assoc. Professor Sarah Legge (TSR Hub Theme Leader, University of Queensland and Australian National University), Assoc. Professor Ben Phillips (TSR Hub Chief Investigator, University of Melbourne), Professor Chris Johnson (TSR Hub Chief Investigator, University of Tasmania), Natasha Cadenhead (TSR Hub Research Associate, University of Melbourne), Assoc. Professor Michael Bode (TSR Hub Chief Investigator, Queensland University of Technology), Professor Sarah Bekessy (TSR Hub Chief Investigator, RMIT University), Dr Jeremy Ringma (TSR Hub Research Fellow, RMIT University), Dr Rachel Morgain (TSR Hub Knowledge Broker, Australian National University) This submission addresses the following term of reference for the inquiry: (f) the adequacy of the management and extent of the National Reserve System (NRS), stewardship arrangements, covenants and connectivity through wildlife corridors in conserving threatened fauna
Premise of submission
Loss of suitable habitat is a major underpinning cause of species extinctions. An adequate and well- managed National Reserve System (NRS) is therefore the enduring foundation for the conservation of Australia’s biodiversity, including its threatened species. Key Issues
• The NRS, including the Indigenous Protected Area network, is fundamental for the conservation of Australia’s threatened species and must be maintained, as it secures many species from threats operating outside the reserve system. • The NRS is not comprehensive in its representation of environments, and many threatened species do not occur in it. • Although successive iterations of the NRS framework have called for a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system, the adequacy dimension has never been appropriately defined or implemented. The existing reserve system is inadequate for the long- term conservation needs of many species. • Some of the principal factors driving the decline of threatened species are tenure-blind, and – unless appropriately and effectively managed – the reserve system provides no or inadequate protection for threatened species against these threats. Hence, the reserve system has failed to ensure the viability and persistence of at least some threatened species occurring in them. • An effective National Reserve System that maintains conservation values, including threatened species persistence, is underpinned by adequate management resources and consistent and clearly-defined management goals. In many instances, degazettal decisions are not sufficiently well justified and published and do not lead to direct additions in other areas.
Page 1 of 11 • The National Reserve System will lose its biodiversity values if it operates as a series of isolated fragments; its enduring value depends upon maintaining or re-building landscape-scale connectivity. • The effectiveness of the reserve system is contingent upon complementary off-reserve management, and this complementarity is not being delivered effectively. • A network of predator-free islands and fenced exclosures provides a necessary short-term complement to the reserve system, and is required to prevent the extinction of many predator- susceptible threatened mammal species. However, many more predator-free islands and fenced exclosures are needed to adequately protect Australia’s predator-susceptible threatened species.
Implications
F1. Maintaining a commitment to the long-term security of the National Reserve System will be crucial for conserving Australia’s biodiversity, including threatened species. F2. Strategically increase the comprehensiveness of the NRS to remedy its environmental bias by adding reserves in environments that are currently unreserved or poorly reserved, especially those environments occurring on highly productive landscapes, and by encompassing populations of all presently-unreserved threatened species, is essential for the long term conservation of Australian biodiversity. F3. Incorporating a working definition of adequacy into reserve design and NRS evaluation criteria, and expanding the reserve system to ensure that it meets such an adequacy criterion is necessary to ensure the reserve system contributes to the persistence of threatened species. a. A definition of adequacy should include the criterion that individual reserves and the reserve system as a whole are sufficiently large to maintain viable populations of threatened species occurring within them. F4. Through the development, implementation and measurement of performance of park management plans, ensure that threats affecting threatened species in reserves are managed effectively such that populations of threatened species in reserves are maintained or recovered. F5. Ensuring systematic and sufficiently powerful monitoring of threatened species and threats in reserves and the reserve system will enhance the effectiveness of park management and its national contribution to threatened species conservation. F6. Ensuring resourcing of park management is sufficient to meet conservation objectives; and securing the NRS against downgrading, downsizing and degazettal is essential for the long term persistence of many threatened species. F7. Maintaining and restoring native vegetation linkages between reserves, for example by resurrecting the National Wildlife Corridors Program, would help ensure the quality and viability of parks and the species that depend on them; F8. Ensuring that off-reserve policy, law, regulations, and management practices deliver conservation outcomes that are complementary to the NRS is crucial to securing many threatened species. If complementary management cannot be achieved to an adequate level, then the extent of the formal reserve system would need to be increased in these environments to ensure the persistence of many threatened species. F9. Enhance the use of strategic regional planning, to ensure that the conservation reserve system is comprehensive, adequate and representative at regional level, attuned to regional factors, and complemented by appropriate off-reserve management. F10. Providing government support and coordination to increasing the comprehensiveness, adequacy and representation of the network of predator-free islands and fenced exclosures will be crucial to ensuring the conservation of Australia’s many threatened mammal species that are susceptible at population level to introduced predators.
Page 2 of 11 Discussion
Foundational role of Australia’s National Reserve System
The National Reserve System, including the Indigenous Protected Area network, is a foundation for the conservation of Australia’s threatened species and must be maintained, as it secures many species from threats operating outside the reserve system.
Australia’s National Reserve System (NRS) currently covers 19.6% of Australia’s land area, 8.7% of which are within Indigenous Protected Areas (CAPAD 2016) (See also our response to ToR (g) for more detail). However, approximately 50% of Australia’s natural habitats on land have been either cleared or modified to non-natural state, with some vegetation types having lost >90% of their original extent (Tulloch et al. 2016; Metcalfe & Bui 2017).
The NRS is an essential ingredient in the conservation and recovery of Australia’s threatened species. It provides security for many threatened species against some major threats, most notably vegetation clearance. Its areal extent meets or nearly meets international targets (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2010), and it has made some notable progress in its comprehensiveness over recent decades (Barr et al. 2016). The establishment and expansion of the Indigenous Protected Area network has been especially notable, allowing for a major contribution of Indigenous management to the conservation of the many threatened species that occur only or mainly on Indigenous lands (Renwick et al. 2017).
Inclusion within the reserve system is highly likely to have prevented the extinction of many of Australia’s threatened species. For example, the imminent extinction of the Endangered noisy scrub- bird Atrichornis clamosus was averted by the establishment of Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve in 1967, encompassing the last known subpopulation of this declining species. Prior to the establishment of that conservation reserve, the habitat was proposed for coastal development (Danks 1997). Subsequently, the reserve proved to also hold the last surviving subpopulation of the Critically Endangered Gilbert’s potoroo Potorous gilbertii (Woinarski et al. 2014). If this area had not been reserved, and subsequently carefully managed, these two species most likely would have become extinct. The reserve system also protects many species that are so poorly-known that their conservation status cannot be determined.
Comprehensiveness and adequacy of the National Reserve System
The National Reserve System is not comprehensive in its representation of environments, and many threatened species do not occur in it.
The reserve system is biased, with lack of representation of many environments especially those associated with more fertile, productive and economically valuable lands (Taylor et al. 2014).
Page 3 of 11 Because of their value for other land uses, many of the unrepresented environments are now much reduced, transformed and fragmented, and in urgent need of better protection.
Although representation of all threatened species within the reserve system has long been a target of the system (Joint ANZECC/MCFFA National Forest Policy Statement Implementation Sub- committee 1997; Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council 1999), many of Australia’s threatened species do not occur in any reserves. At least 160 terrestrial threatened species (ca. 13% of all Australian terrestrial threatened species) have distributions which fall entirely outside the conservation reserve system, and less than 20% of threatened species have adequate representation (Watson et al. 2011).
Although successive iterations of the NRS framework have called for a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system, the adequacy dimension has never been appropriately defined or implemented. Existing reserves and the existing reserve system is inadequate for the long-term conservation needs of many species
One of the three defining features in the guidelines for establishing the National Reserve System was adequacy – the need to provide sufficient protection to guarantee the long-term survival of species and ecological communities. Through successive iterations of guidelines and principles (Joint ANZECC/MCFFA National Forest Policy Statement Implementation Sub-committee 1997; Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council 1999; Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council 2005; National Reserve System Task Group 2010), no appropriate definition of adequacy has been developed. For threatened species, an appropriate definition is that individual reserves, and the reserve system as a whole, should be large enough to ensure that their population viability is maintained or recovered within the reserve or system of reserves. Where this has been assessed, studies have shown that the current system is clearly inadequate for the long-term maintenance or recovery of at least some threatened species currently occurring within the system (Todd et al. 2016; Taylor et al. 2017; Clements et al. 2018).
The definition of adequacy should also consider future changes in environmental suitability due to climate change, including future occurrence of extreme climate events. Australia will experience large environmental impacts of climate change before the end of the century (Steffen et al. 2009). Modelling of the responses of vertebrate fauna show that many species will need to shift their geographic ranges to adjust to these changes (Reside et al 2013). In many cases it is unlikely that the existing reserve system will allow for such shifts. New reserves or expansion of existing reserves should be planned to respond to climate change impacts, for example by increasing landscape-scale connectivity to allow species to track changing habitat suitability and by representing climate gradients and including areas likely to function as climate-change refugia.
Page 4 of 11 Conservation values in the National Reserve System are unevenly maintained
Some of the principal factors driving the decline of threatened species are tenure-blind. The reserve system currently provides inadequate protection against these threats.
Although the National Reserve System provides effective protection against many threats, some threats – particularly those posed by invasive species – occur pervasively across reserved and unreserved lands and many of these are not being managed in reserves. For example, a recent analysis by the NESP TSR Hub found that the density of feral cats was no less in conservation reserves than in comparable lands of other tenures (Legge et al. 2017). Hence, the many threatened animal species affected by cats receive little protection from the reserve system. Comparable incidence of threats on and off-reserves occurs for many introduced pests and weeds, for climate change and – in some situations – for fire regimes (Murphy et al. 2010; Russell-Smith et al. 2012).
Private conservation organations are making a significant contribution to protecting threatened species against many such pervasive threats through active invasive species control and exclusion and through well organized and planned land management. The emergence of the Australian Land Conservation Alliance as a well-organized driving force behind private land conservation is a welcome development. Cross tenure cooperation and collaboration to support coordinated conservation prioritisaton and action will significantly enhance conseraviton outcomes for threatened species. However, many conservation managers on private and public land would benefit from a clear and coordinated understanding and plan for dealing with pervasive threats impacting on priority species in their reserves. Increasing the capacity, resources, support for management strategy development will help managers deal with major threats more effectively. No management, or passive management of pervasive threats, will lead to continued loss of the biodiversity that the reserve system seeks to protect.
The reserve system has failed to ensure the viability and persistence of at least some threatened species occurring in them.
There are many examples of threatened species becoming locally extinct in conservation reserves. For example, three of the four extinctions of endemic vertebrate species that occurred in Australia in the last 10-20 years were of species that mostly occurred in a large and relatively well-resourced conservation reserve (the Christmas Island pipistrelle Pipistrellus murrayi, Christmas Island shrew Crocidura trichura and Christmas Island forest skink Emoia nativitatis) (Woinarski et al. 2017). Likewise, as an example of a probably pervasive problem, there have been extirpations (e.g. of the brush-tailed rabbit-rat Conilurus penicillatus) and major declines of at least 28 threatened species in Kakadu National Park over recent decades (Woinarski et al. 2001; Woinarski et al. 2010; Winderlich and Woinarski 2014; Woinarski and Winderlich 2014) due to threatening factors that were not adequately managed.
Page 5 of 11 For many reserves, there is little available information on trends in threatened species or the incidence and intensity of threats because there is little or no effective monitoring of them. Without such monitoring programs, it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of management, or of the extent to which individual reserves or the reserve system is achieving the goal of maintaining or recovering threatened species. The NESP TSR Hub has recently developed a framework for best- practice monitoring for threatened species, that can be used to help guide such park monitoring (see our response to ToR (i)).
The effectiveness of the National Reserve System in maintaining conservation values, including threatened species persistence, is undermined by inadequate management resources and ad hoc management goals.
Many reserves, including some of those most critical for the recovery of threatened species, have insufficient resources for their management, ineffective management plans, and no long-term funding security (Buckley et al. 2008; Parr et al. 2009; Taylor et al. 2011; Watson et al. 2014). Over recent decades, there has also been a weakening or loss of the conservation function of some reserves through downgrading, downsizing and degazettal (Ritchie et al. 2013; Cook et al. 2017).
These issues are often compounded in Indigenous Protected Areas, where lack of secure, long-term resources is creating inequities for Indigenous communities, presenting challenges in meeting Caring for Country responsibilities, and impacting on communities’ capacity to manage threats to species (Sithole et al. 2008; and see our response to Term of Reference (g)).
Fragmentation, landscape-scale management and planning of the National Reserve System
The National Reserve System will lose its biodiversity values if it operates as a series of isolated fragments. Its enduring value depends on maintaining or re-building landscape-scale connectivity.
Lands (and aquatic systems) outside reserves are increasingly likely to lose their conservation value, resulting in an increasing isolation of the components of the reserve system. Many resident species (especially those occurring at low densities or requiring large home ranges) currently present in reserves will face an extinction debt – an inexorable momentum of decline to extinction – because habitat fragmentation, small population size and limited genetic diversity will render their reserved populations unviable. For highly mobile species that move around the landscape in response to shifts in resources through time and space, habitat loss outside the reserve system, and ongoing fragmentation of their required habitats, will stymie dispersal options foreclosing their capability to move as needed (Woinarski et al. 1992). The conservation outlook for many highly dispersive species (such as the regent honeyeater Anthochaera phrygia, swift parrot Lathamus discolor and Australian painted snipe Rostratula australis) will become increasingly dire if the landscape-scale connectivity of the reserve system is not maintained or increased.
Page 6 of 11 Climate change greatly amplifies the need for sufficient linkages across the reserve system, because many species will need to move to track spatial changes in suitable climates and habitats (Lindenmayer and Sato, 2018, Steffen et al. 2009). Furthermore, studies indicate that climate change will push the suitable habitats of Australia’s native fauna and flora towards coastal regions, where the current reserve system mostly comprises smaller and more fragmented reserves, surrounded by densely populated and extensively modified areas (Maggini et al. 2013; Gonzalez-Orozco et al. 2016). This poses further threats to the long-term viability of Australia’s threatened species and has been poorly accounted for in the current management, and coordination of the NRS.
The effectiveness of the reserve system is contingent upon complementary off-reserve management, and this complementarity is not being delivered effectively.
The guidelines for the development of the national forest reserve system were explicit that the conservation of forest biodiversity was dependent upon the coordinated contributions of the formal reserve system and the delivery of conservation benefits from appropriate off-reserve management (Joint ANZECC/MCFFA National Forest Policy Statement Implementation Sub-committee 1997). As evidenced in the ongoing decline of the Critically Endangered Leadbeater’s possum Gymnobelideus leadbeateri, and the montane ash forest on which it depends (also Critically Endangered: Burns et al. 2015; Lindenmayer and Sato 2018), – and likewise of the Critically Endangered swift parrot – off- reserve management is currently not providing the adequate complement to the reserve system (Lindenmayer et al. 2015; Webb et al. 2018).
There is an ongoing need to enhance strategic regional planning to deliver a more robust reserve system attuned to regional factors. The adequacy and focus of management of threatened species in the reserve system needs to be assessed at landscape scales in terms of the extent of ecosystem types and their condition to provide habitat for threatened species.
Provision of adequate habitat to ensure survival and productivity of threatened species is a priority for the reserve system. This requires specific habitat attributes to supply food and nest sites for species, as well as landscape attributes to ensure adequate ranges, population viability and migration routes. The condition of the ecosystem to provide these habitat attributes is related to the degree of degradation, occurrence of native compared with exotic species, and the spatial extent and distribution. All these attributes need to be included in the regional-scale design and management of the reserve system.
The value of predator-free islands and fenced exclosures
A network of islands and exclosures that are free of introduced predators is a necessary complement to the conventional reserve system, and is required in the short to medium-term to prevent extinction of predator-susceptible threatened mammal species.
Page 7 of 11
Australian mammals in particular have experienced a high rate of extinction over the last 200 years (see our response to ToR a), with most of these extinctions caused largely by introduced predators (cats and foxes). Most conservation reserves under current management will fail to conserve and recover such predator-susceptible species. The establishment and ongoing expansion of a series of predator-free islands and predator-proof exclosures (hereafter, ‘havens’), to conserve and recover threatened mammal species that are markedly susceptible to introduced predators, has been a remarkable and highly successful complement to the National Reserve System. As described in a series of recent NESP TSR Hub reviews, these havens have been established by a mix of state government, local government, NGOs, community groups, private individuals, and Indigenous groups (Legge et al. in press). However, partly because of the diversity of players, that haven network has grown relatively unsystematically, with the result that many predator-susceptible threatened mammal species are not represented (Ringma et al. 2018). For the system to contribute to the recovery of Australia’s threatened mammal fauna most strategically, it should be better informed by more coordinated action, and nationally-scaled guidelines about comprehensiveness (all threatened mammal species that are susceptible at population level to introduced predators should be included in havens), adequacy (the havens should maintain populations that are sufficiently large to reduce extinction-risk effectively) and representativeness (predator susceptible threatened mammal species should be represented in several havens across their former range).
Although currently vital for preventing extinction in these species, the network should only be considered a short- to medium-term solution, until approaches to reducing the impacts of introduced predators across open landscapes can be designed and implemented. Havens represent only tiny fractions (usually, less than 1%) of the previous distributions of these threatened mammal species, and the longer-term aim must be to re-establish these species over much greater areas, thus reducing extinction risk and also restoring ecological function to the landscape (see ToR (b)). In addition, havens introduce new management considerations: they protect mammal populations from predation, but they also artificially constrain their movement. This can lead to over-population and overgrazing of vegetation (Moseby et al. 2018a); lower reproductive output from inbreeding depression (Hayward & Kerley 2009); and the loss of anti-predator adaptations (Jolly et al. 2018; Moseby et al. 2018b). Where practical, genetic management and moderated predator exposure should be used to ensure that fenced populations do not become less fit over time.
Page 8 of 11 References
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