A bioregional framework for planning the national systems of protected areas in Australia

Abstract

Australia is a federation of eight states and territories, each of which controls its own protected areas system. These together with the federal system make nine separate protected areas systems. Each system has developed in a different way, with a variety of operational goals and terminology. A key requirement for cooperation between these jurisdictions - an agreed upon national classification of ecosystems or environments - was lacking until recently. The development of a national classification of ecosystems, termed the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA), by the agencies responsible for nature conservation, represents a significant breakthrough for planning and implementation of national conservation initiatives in Australia. A series of conservation planning attributes have been integrated into the IBRA to establish a bioregional planning framework for assessing the relative distribution of conservation values and priorities within each region. This paper describes the benefits of using the IBRA as the top layer in a bioregional framework, along with the need to continue developments in finer scale regionalizations that include cultural and social values. Through the integration of environmental, cultural, and social values, Australia is working to identify deficiencies in the existing systems of protected areas and to establish priorities for filling these gaps. Show more