In such a dry landscape, water is of paramount importance; appropriate management of wetlands is critical to provide a sustainable and wise use of water resources, and to conserve their complex diversity.

For the same reasons it is incumbent upon politicians and managers of wetlands in Australia to recognise the ASL as a key "stakeholder", and to both heed and seek its advice wherever and whenever appropriate.

Accordingly the following document has been prepared by a working group from within the Society, and its has the full support of the Society's executive.

In themselves wetlands have an intrinsic value which is not directly related to any human benefit: wetland systems include plants and animals which have a right to exist irrespective of our activities and it is our moral obligation to respect that right. This extends to the way we perceive our role in wetland management: one alternative which must be considered is for the active non-management of wetlands (in other words, to leave them be!).

Beneficial values

In addition, wetlands have extraordinary beneficial values to humans: they have ecological value and as such improve the quality of our surroundings, they have a direct financial value for the things we can extract from them, they have considerable social value as places for meeting, recreation, relaxation, learning and aesthetic appreciation, and they have cultural significance.

Do we know enough?

Too often we assume that we know it all, and that for each wetland a set of values and benefits can be listed and evaluated. Sadly, there is much we do not know about wetlands, and the role they play in ecosystem maintenance, or their direct or indirect benefits to other catchment and off-shore values. Unforeseen values, and interactive values which are often too complex to decipher therefore have to be catered for in wetland management. These types of values dictate caution in the way that we behave in the absence of knowledge.

Rehabilitation will focus on ecological processes, so that wetlands continue to act as equilibration points in sedimentary processes, nutrient and carbon assimilation and cycling.

Key principles for Management

• Wetlands are part of entire systems and cannot be managed in isolation. Water will not stay still; it connects areas by flowing across or through them, and transports material with it. So wetlands cannot be used as dumping grounds and cannot be managed and protected in isolation. To do either would be both foolhardy and counterproductive to the aims of conserving and rehabilitating wetlands.
• Recognise the importance of bioregions as our warehouses of distinctive and endemic biodiversity. This principle emphasises that the "bioregion" is the most important geographic scale for determining management priorities for wetlands, and their relative importance for reservation and sustainable utilisation.
• Ensure that local, historical, anecdotal and scientific knowledge is accessed and used in a coordinated fashion. Substantial information is now available for public purposes, but rarely is it held in one place. Bioregional planning and catchment management should include this collation process. Apart from anything else this should both enlighten local decision makers or other interested parties.
• Ensure that management has a precautionary approach in the absence of data, and that the requirements for ongoing research, baseline data, and monitoring as benchmarks for environmental quality are well understood in the wider community.
• All of the above suggest the need for a cooperative, holistic approach in the management of inland waters, in order to be pre-emptive, and to benefit future generations. Cooperation must exist between scientists, government or other regulatory agencies, private industry, and local communities for an effective resolution to catchment based processes. This implies that common goals of wetland conservation and restoration are greater than local or sectoral interests in using them.

Some Key Management Practices

• The effects of clearing native vegetation are now well understood in terms of the salinisation, sedimentation and eutrophication of inland waters.
  • Clearance control legislation should be immediately implemented in all states and territories, and coordinated centrally.
  • The maintenance of existing riparian zones, and buffer zones around these riparian zones, is of paramount importance to maintain viable ecological processes within wetlands.
  • Where appropriate, rehabilitation of degraded wetlands should always include the re-establishment of riparian vegetation.

• Feral and domestic stock can, through defaecating in, and trampling in and around wetlands, drastically alter ecological processes within wetlands, and ultimately degrade their values.
  • Protocols for stock removal from wetlands must be developed and their implementation encouraged within rural communities. The management of feral stock needs more research on appropriate methods of control.
• We have to apply reasonable limits to the extraction of water so that wetland processes can be maintained. This applies to groundwater extraction, irrigation activities and the construction of dams.
  • Dams and weirs should be constructed only after all other alternatives have been fully explored, and if constructed ensure that design caters for adequate environmental flows and other biological considerations such as fish migrations.
• We have to phase-out of the dumping of wastes into our waterways and wetlands (by rejecting the notion that wetlands can be used to dilute our wastes). Natural wetalnds must not be used for waste disposal, and the construction of artificial wetalnds cannot be used as a justification for the continued degradation of natural wetlands.