1. Bob Pressey & Stephanie Januchowski
Planning from the mountains to the sea: where do freshwater protected areas fit?
Bob Pressey & Stephanie Januchowski
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University

2. Integrated catchment management … we have a problem
The need for difficult tradeoffs between diverse objectives and values
Freshwater protected areas (in the broadest sense) have distinctive roles in integrated catchment management
Freshwater protected areas are wrapped up in the tradeoff problem

3. Examples from the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef:
Some extensive clearing still permitted
Exemptions for small-scale clearing
Likely cryptic clearing by chemicals
Expansion of urban areas and related infrastructure
Loss of terrestrial species from patches of native vegetation due to isolation, fire, invasives
Soil loss under grazing
Applications of fertilisers, pesticides
Defining the problem …
1. Diverse, spatially uncorrelated values (contributions to multiple objectives)
2. The need for incremental investments
3. Ongoing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services

4. The upshot (1 + 2 + 3) = managers must make hard choices between diverse values
Values that are not protected this year have a risk of being lost or degraded
Choices about what to protect are also choices about what must be lost
These choices involve mixing “apples and oranges” across diverse values
The consequences of the factors described in the previous three slides.

5. Lower floodplain:
Best-practice land uses to reduce pesticides, nutrients
Retention of intact wetlands
Restoration of floodplain forest
Middle reaches with reduced riparian vegetation:
Restoration for riparian and instream biota
Restoration to reduce bank erosion
Fencing to exclude stock
Best-practice land uses
Cleared headwaters:
Restoration to minimize soil loss
Control of sources of aquatic weeds
Best-practice land use for soil loss,
chemicals, nutrients
Forested headwaters:
Retention of forest cover
Management of logging
Management of grazing, fire

6. Conclusions …
Freshwater protection and restoration have several important roles
Tradeoffs between freshwater and other activities, but also between different freshwater activities
Managers need better tools to resolve these tradeoffs: explicit ways of making choices but also ways of understanding the implications of investing in different values in different ways