Incorporating research results into wetland management: lessons from recovery catchments in saline landscapes Stuart A. Halse 1, * & Tilo Massenbauer 2 1 Department of Conservation and Land Management, Science Division, P.O. Box 51, Wanneroo, 6946, WA, Australia 2 Department of Conservation and Land Management, South Coast Region, Dempster Street, Esperance, 6450, WA, Australia (*Author for correspondence: E-mail: [email protected]) Key words: catchment management, reserve management, biodiversity, salinisation, Western Australia Abstract Use of science in wetland management has increased considerably over the last 50 years but there is still scope for improving the transfer of research results into management. Issues that lead to less than optimal transfer include: (1) managers not accessing existing technical information adequately, (2) researchers addressing issues of peripheral importance to management rather than key information needs, (3) managers failing to identify significant information gaps and to resource appropriate research in a timely way, (4) scale of research and certainty of results being inappropriate for application to broad-scale situations by managers responsible for outcomes, and (5) funding bodies not fully recognizing that transfer of research results to management requires a development phase. Establishment of recovery catchments in the Western Australian wheatbelt, with the aim of maintaining regional biodiversity in the face of increasing dryland salinisation, is a program that relies on transferring research results into management. However, the multi- disciplinary nature of managing salinisation is a challenge for many catchment managers and formal management systems are probably an important adjunct to close knowledge of the catchment when making management decisions. An examination of management planning and actions in the Lake Warden Natural Diversity Recovery Catchment, south-west Western Australia, highlights the continuum between research and management, the importance of understanding the physical environment when managing biodiversity, and the fact that much wetland conservation relies on management action in terrestrial landscapes. Introduction The history of wetland management by public agencies in Western Australia is a short one. The first National Park was proclaimed in 1900; the first wetland Nature Reserve was not gazetted until 1955 and its purpose was to provide a venue for public duck-hunting rather than to protect the waterbody itself. However, by 2003, Western Australia had 1372 nature reserves (6.6% of land area), many of which contained wetlands (Mobbs, 1987; Department of Conservation and Land Management, unpublished data) and, coinciding with increased environmental awareness in the community at large that began in the 1970s (e.g., Seddon, 1972), the focus of management had shifted towards maintaining wetland condition. Likewise, management of reserves designated for recreation and protection of water quality has broadened to include aspects of biodiversity (Department of Conservation and Land Manage- ment, 2004). Resource-related use of wetlands such as duck- hunting and to a lesser extent, inland fishing, have long been characterized by active, research-driven management (Ratti et al., 1982; Margetts & Ell- cott, 1985). Over the past 30 years, management of wetlands for conservation has also become more Hydrobiologia (2005) 552:33–44 Ó Springer 2005 D. Ryder, A. Boulton & P. De Deckker (eds), Conservation and Management of Australia’s Water Resources: 20/20 Vision or Blind Faith – A Tribute to the late Bill Williams DOI 10.1007/s10750-005-1503-8
Transcript
Incorporating research results into wetland management: lessons
from recovery catchments in saline landscapes
Stuart A. Halse1,* & Tilo Massenbauer21Department of Conservation and Land Management, Science Division, P.O. Box 51, Wanneroo, 6946, WA, Australia2Department of Conservation and Land Management, South Coast Region, Dempster Street, Esperance, 6450, WA,Australia
Key words: catchment management, reserve management, biodiversity, salinisation, Western Australia
Abstract
Use of science in wetland management has increased considerably over the last 50 years but there is stillscope for improving the transfer of research results into management. Issues that lead to less than optimaltransfer include: (1) managers not accessing existing technical information adequately, (2) researchersaddressing issues of peripheral importance to management rather than key information needs, (3) managersfailing to identify significant information gaps and to resource appropriate research in a timely way, (4)scale of research and certainty of results being inappropriate for application to broad-scale situations bymanagers responsible for outcomes, and (5) funding bodies not fully recognizing that transfer of researchresults to management requires a development phase. Establishment of recovery catchments in the WesternAustralian wheatbelt, with the aim of maintaining regional biodiversity in the face of increasing drylandsalinisation, is a program that relies on transferring research results into management. However, the multi-disciplinary nature of managing salinisation is a challenge for many catchment managers and formalmanagement systems are probably an important adjunct to close knowledge of the catchment when makingmanagement decisions. An examination of management planning and actions in the Lake Warden NaturalDiversity Recovery Catchment, south-west Western Australia, highlights the continuum between researchand management, the importance of understanding the physical environment when managing biodiversity,and the fact that much wetland conservation relies on management action in terrestrial landscapes.
Introduction
The history of wetland management by publicagencies in Western Australia is a short one. Thefirst National Park was proclaimed in 1900; thefirst wetland Nature Reserve was not gazetteduntil 1955 and its purpose was to provide a venuefor public duck-hunting rather than to protect thewaterbody itself. However, by 2003, WesternAustralia had 1372 nature reserves (6.6% of landarea), many of which contained wetlands (Mobbs,1987; Department of Conservation and LandManagement, unpublished data) and, coincidingwith increased environmental awareness in the
community at large that began in the 1970s (e.g.,Seddon, 1972), the focus of management hadshifted towards maintaining wetland condition.Likewise, management of reserves designated forrecreation and protection of water quality hasbroadened to include aspects of biodiversity(Department of Conservation and Land Manage-ment, 2004).
Resource-related use of wetlands such as duck-hunting and to a lesser extent, inland fishing, havelong been characterized by active, research-drivenmanagement (Ratti et al., 1982; Margetts & Ell-cott, 1985). Over the past 30 years, management ofwetlands for conservation has also become more
Hydrobiologia (2005) 552:33–44 � Springer 2005D. Ryder, A. Boulton & P. De Deckker (eds), Conservation and Management of Australia’s Water Resources:20/20 Vision or Blind Faith – A Tribute to the late Bill WilliamsDOI 10.1007/s10750-005-1503-8
active, with wider use of management plans andgreater input from research. Nevertheless, thereseems to be a widespread belief among researchersthat managers frequently do not use the bestavailable scientific information when makingmanagement decisions and policy (e.g., Cullen,1990; Pouyat, 1999; Mitchell & Craig, 2000). Weagree this is sometimes the case but regard thecauses as more complex than simply failure bymanagers to avail themselves of informationresearchers want to provide. In this paper, we de-scribe (1) some steps we believe managers shouldtake to increase the amount of science in theirmanagement, and (2) issues researchers should beaware of when scoping research intended to berelevant to management. We then describe acatchment-based wetland management program inWestern Australia to illustrate the multi-disci-plinary nature and heavy reliance on researchinformation that characterizes much contempo-rary wetland management. Finally, we identifysome factors making catchment-based wetlandmanagement a daunting undertaking.
The role of managers
We define management as the policy developmentand operational actions undertaken to ensurewetlands retain their natural ecological functionsand biodiversity, within constraints imposed byexisting and planned human activities (see Boulton& Brock, 1999). In this paper we are chiefly con-cerned with the planning aspects of management,perhaps at a regional level to design a wetlandreserve system or at a local level to plan protectionof a wetland. Information about wetlands, theirvalues, and the ecological processes within themforms the cornerstone of such management (Szaroet al., 1998). Commissioned research is one sourceof information; other cost-effective sources arepre-existing research results, liaising with col-leagues in other management agencies, improvinglinks with universities (where the information maylie in student projects), reading literature andtalking to locals (Cullen, 1990). While encouragingmanagers to make use of existing information, wealso caution against over-enthusiastic extrapola-tion to new situations because of the inherentvariability between wetlands and the difficulties of
using information designed for one question inanswering another (Underwood, 1998).
It is important to recognize that managementplanning and what is traditionally referred to asapplied research are not mutually exclusive activ-ities: in fact they are points on a continuum. Bothdeal with hypotheses about how wetlands operate.In research, the focus is collecting detailed dataabout wetlands to generate or test hypotheses. Inmanagement, the focus is implementing actions tomaintain wetland condition based on previouslyformed hypotheses about how wetlands function,but data collection occurs to check that the out-comes are those predicted. When systems arepoorly understood, management is an iterativeprocess of action, monitoring and revisedhypotheses (Walters, 1986). Organizing and inter-preting data and testing hypotheses are majormanagement activities, so that managers are oftenbest placed to coordinate multi-disciplinary,catchment-scale applied research. However, man-agers can guide researchers only if they conceptu-alize management issues, identify information gapsand enunciate the research questions that needanswering.
Effective transfer of research
Transfer of research results into management isnot only about communication (cf. Cullen, 1990).It also depends on the will to achieve transfer andthe way in which the research has been scoped.Technical obstacles will be fewer if researchersunderstand management perspectives on keyissues, scale, pattern and biological uncertainties.
Key issues
Managers are usually interested in maximizing thereturn on each dollar spent and therefore are morelikely to act upon research results from issues thatare management priorities. In wetlands of theWestern Australian wheatbelt, dryland salinityassociated with land-clearing and global warmingare the major threats to biodiversity (Halse et al.,2003; Thomas et al., 2004). Research into biolog-ical responses to threats such as nutrients andintroduced species, while important and perhapsmore amenable to study, will not inform the mainmanagement issues.
There are two-scale related issues. Firstly, it is oftendifficult to apply research results when manage-ment operates at different scales or measurementunits from the research (Cullen, 1990). For exam-ple, considerable effort is needed to convertresearch information on the environmental flowsrequired for biodiversity from the biologicallyimportant units of depth to more management-friendly units of volume. An example of scale isthat information about detailed water chemistry atthe sediment/water interface of wetlands providesinsight into the biology of some benthic organisms(Burke & Knott, 1997) but management is easier ifthe occurrence of biota can be related to a singlewater sample that is easily collected (e.g., Knott etal., 2003).
The second scale issue is that the importance ofenvironmental factors in controlling biologicaldistributions usually depends on the degree ofvariation in the factors within the region. Forexample, wetland salinity on the coastal plain ofsouth-western Australia has relatively little effecton occurrence of waterbirds because nearly allwetlands are fresh or contain freshwater seeps,whereas it is the factor most often determiningdistributions in adjacent inland areas where wet-lands range from fresh to hypersaline (Halse et al.,1993; Davis et al., 2001). Applied research onenvironmental factors needs to be at the same scaleas its intended application.
Process and pattern
There is bias among many research-funding bodiesand scientific journals towards research intomechanisms controlling biological distributionsand wetland function rather than description ofspecies distributions or wetland values (Cullen,1990). Yet many of the important planning deci-sions managers make, such as selecting wetlandsfor reservation and assigning conservation statusto individual species, are based on patternsobtained from biological survey (Coates & Atkins,2001; Halse et al., 2004). Process-related research,while critical to providing the overall framework inwhich conservation planning occurs, tends to beused at the planning level to solve either threats to
wetland integrity or land use conflicts. An exampleof the latter is research on chironomid midgebiology to prevent swarms of adult midgesemerging from wetlands in urban nature reservesand entering nearby houses (Pinder et al., 1993;Trayler et al., 1994). More pattern research, in theform of survey and taxonomy, would lead to bet-ter informed conservation planning at the regionallevel (Halse, 1998).
Uncertainty
Much of the tension between managers andresearchers revolves around situations where, forwhat may be loosely described as political rea-sons, managers must make decisions based onlittle information (see Pouyat, 1999). An exampleis deciding whether to approve discharge of salinewater from a drainage scheme into a relativelyundisturbed wetland when economic benefits ofthe scheme are substantial and quantified whereasbiological impacts are poorly understood (Halse,2004). Managers perceive researchers as focusingon the uncertainties and need for more data, ra-ther than applying themselves to choosing thebest outcome. While managers may agree whenresearchers suggest these difficult decisions rep-resent an opportunity for adaptive management(Walters, 1986), the cost of collecting useful datais usually high in relation to the capital costof the proposed project and difficult to justifyroutinely.
Given the perception that researchers are pre-occupied with collecting more data to increasecertainty before acting, it may seem ironic thatmuch published literature is based on effect sizesthat have little explanatory power (Andersonet al., 2001). For example, if species richness andwater depth are compared at 100 wetlands usingPearson correlation, a significant relationship canbe found at the 5% level when <4% of variationin species richness is actually explained by depth.Clearly, the results of this hypothetical publishedresearch would be an inadequate basis for man-agement action and provide some justification forthe caution of researchers when confronted by theneed to make recommendations.
While we have outlined above what we regardas some important considerations when scopingapplied research, some fundamental research into
ecology has had much greater long-term benefitsfor the conservation of biodiversity than individualapplied studies. We believe it is essential to main-tain a balance between fundamental research andthat aimed directly at management questions.
Funding research
Much applied research is an integral part ofmanagement and should be funded out of themanagement budget at a regional level: our papermostly addresses this type of research. Tradition-ally, industry and government funding agenciesinitiate some strategic applied research. Examplesof the latter are the studies of duck biology, pop-ulation sizes and hunting mortality undertaken tomanage duck-hunting (e.g., Ratti et al., 1982) andthe research undertaken to provide a tool for rel-atively cheap assessment of river health in a uni-form way across very large areas (e.g., Davies,2000). Our experience of strategic research is thattransfer into routine operational tools is an itera-tive process that can involve researchers, at vary-ing levels of time commitment, for several yearsafter the main research project finishes and explicitfunding of transfer is critical.
Case study in the Western Australian wheatbelt
We further illustrate some of the issues associatedwith transferring research to management throughreference to the Western Australian State SalinityStrategy. Dryland salinisation is an environmentalproblem that is almost uniquely severe in south-west Western Australia (Williams, 1987; NLWRA,2001). The region has aMediterranean climate withhot dry summers and cool wet winters. Salinisationhas occurred in the 700–300 mm rainfall zone(Fig. 1) after replacement of natural perennialvegetation by annual crops and pastures, whichreduced evapo-transpiration and led to greaterwetting of soil profiles, with concomitant increase ingroundwater recharge (Fig. 2). Groundwater ismostly saline and, furthermore, there is usually alarge amount of salt stored in the soil profile. Risinggroundwater brings salt in solution to the root zoneand soil surface,where plant death, salt scalding andincreased surfacewater salinity occur (George et al.,
1995; Fig. 2). As much damage is caused by water-logging, associated with high watertables, as by saltitself (Bell & Froend, 1990; Cramer &Hobbs, 2002;Halse et al., 2003). Salinisation is a major threat tobiodiversity in south-west Western Australia andmay reduce native species richness in the crop-growing zone by about one-third (Keighery et al.,2002; Halse et al., 2003; McKenzie et al., 2003). Tominimize this loss, the Western Australian Gov-ernment set up Natural Diversity Recovery Catch-ments (NDRCs).
The purpose of NDRCs is to promote man-agement on both private and public land that willmaintain biodiversity values of uncleared areasthreatened by salinisation. Catchments chosen forthe NDRC program all have high biodiversityvalues. Management actions are intended to re-duce groundwater recharge, control surface waterflows and re-vegetate salt-affected areas, so thatsalinisation is halted or reduced. They are co-ordinated by one or more Recovery CatchmentOfficers in each NDRC, of which there are cur-rently six (in 2005), covering areas of 50 000–170 000 ha (Fig. 1).
Conceptually, management of NDRCs isstraightforward (Wallace et al., 2003). Firstly, as-sets to be protected are determined. Secondly,threats to these assets are identified (principallysalinisation but there are subtleties in whether thisis expressed as water-logging, high surface watersalinities, or percolation of groundwater to thesurface causing salt scalds, etc.). Thirdly, threatsare controlled or reduced. Implementation of thesesteps is inevitably complex because informationabout assets is incomplete, relationships betweenthreats and biodiversity values are poorly quanti-fied, and many potential control actions are tech-nically difficult. An additional complication is thatNDRCs consist mostly of cleared agriculturalland, so that catchment officers need to addressthreats coming from agricultural areas outsidetheir control, as well as undertaking work in un-cleared land with conservation tenure. Threatsfrom private land are usually addressed throughincentives to change landuse or agricultural prac-tices but frequently these incentives comparepoorly with financial returns available from agri-cultural production. The large size of NDRCs andrelatively large numbers of landholders withinthem present other logistical problems for
catchment officers, in terms of being familiar withall the catchment and able to communicate easilywith landholders.
Lake Warden NDRC
The Lake Warden NDRC has an area of172 000 ha. Of the 32 000 ha of intact bush, 41%is nature reserve, 39% is unallocated Crown landand other reserves, and 20% is freehold. Annualrainfall varies from 650 mm at the coast to350 mm inland and a variety of wetland systemsworthy of conservation occur. In the northerncatchment, there are numerous small, seasonal,naturally saline wetlands in braided channels.Seasonal circular wetlands, formerly fresh but nowsaline, occur outside the braided channels. Themid-catchment contains some larger wetlands,formerly fresh and supporting eucalypt treesEucalyptus occidentalis Endl., but now saline.
However, the most prominent wetlands belong tothe Lake Warden system in the south (Fig. 3),which is Ramsar-listed as a Wetland of Interna-tional Importance and forms a wetland naturereserve (Department of Conservation and LandManagement, 1990).
In the following sections, we describe someactivities undertaken in the Lake Warden NDRCsince 1999 (when the first catchment officer wasappointed) to illustrate how research results haveinformed management planning. Another aim is tohighlight the extent to which protection andmanagement of biodiversity in wetlands dependson actions in the terrestrial landscape (Boulton &Brock, 1999).
Assets
Initial identification of assets was based on existinginformation. Besides being a Ramsar site, Jaenschet al. (1988) ranked the sections of the Lake
Figure 1. South-west Western Australia with location of Natural Diversity Recovery Catchments (hatched), areas of remnant vege-
tation, and reserves west of line of clearing (black) and reserves to east (grey), and 700 mm rainfall isohyet. Line of clearing
approximates 300 mm isohyet.
37
Warden system in nature reserves as the fifth-mostimportant wetland for waterbirds in south-westWestern Australia. Subsequent survey and moni-toring of the system showed it to be important foraquatic invertebrates as well (Cale et al., 2004;Pinder et al., 2004). To obtain further informationon wetland values, student and agency projectswere commissioned to compile information onhabitat use by waterbirds and aquatic invertebrateswithin the Lake Warden wetlands and waterbirduse of major wetlands nearby (X. Mayer, A. G.Clarke and J. A. K. Lane, unpublished data).
Threats
There is little topographic relief in the Lake War-den catchment and 60% of it consists of broadvalley floors. Groundwater modeling suggestsshallow (<2 m below surface) saline watertableswill develop beneath most of these floors withimpacts varying from subtle reductions in plantvigour to plant death and surface scalding (Cramer &
Hobbs, 2002). Hydrology of selected wetlands inthe mid- and northern catchments where salinitieshave already increased is being studied to improveunderstanding of mechanisms of impact(Marimuthu et al., in press). The Lake Wardensystem currently contains too much water becauseof wet years and increased run-off owing toclearing and high watertables (much of the surfaceflow in creeks entering the system is derived fromgroundwater in upper parts of the catchment). It islikely that flooding will continue to increase, withsubstantial death of littoral vegetation as a resultof waterlogging (Short, 2000; Hatton & Ruprecht,2002).
Salinisation is not the only management issuein the Lake Warden system, which is adjacent tothe expanding townsite of Esperance. The plantpathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi Rands is animportant threat, causing considerable plant death(see Wills, 1993). Ubiquitous threats in WesternAustralia, such as weed invasion and predation onwaterbirds (and terrestrial animals) by domestic
Figure 2. Conceptual diagram of processes involved in dryland salinisation. Trees in uncleared vegetation transpire water and soil
rarely becomes saturated to the watertable during winter. Salt in rainwater concentrates at depth in the soil profile. After clearing,
transpiration is reduced, soil profiles become saturated during winter and there is rapid elevation of the watertable, which may intersect
cats Felix catus Linnaeus and introduced foxesVulpes vulpes Linnaeus, also need to be managed.Control of Phytophthora, foxes, cats, and dogs wasthe subject of large research programs in the 1980sand 1990s (Hardy et al., 2001; Kinnear et al., 2002)that have evolved into routine management tasks.A somewhat different threat, best addressedthrough education, is community apathy towardsprotection of the wetland resource (Wallace,1995). Community interest at Lake Warden isfocused on the adjacent ocean.
Ameliorating threats
Ensuring the local community supports the con-cept of a Lake Warden NDRC is essential.Therefore, catchment officers have overseen theconstruction of interpretative walks though thewetlands, produced coloured information bro-chures and a student curriculum package dealing
with salinisation and wetland conservation, in-stalled roadside signs proclaiming the NDRC, anddesigned a logo for the catchment.
At the outset of the NDRC, catchment officerssurveyed nearly all farmers in the catchment tolearn about the condition of their land, its likelybiodiversity value and farmers’ interest in variousprograms to promote biodiversity, including fenc-ing remnant areas of natural vegetation to excludestock and planting areas with native tree and shrubspecies. Interest in farm forestry and other peren-nial plantings to reduce recharge was also assessed.Subsequently, in conjunction with the Departmentof Agriculture, maps were prepared of landscapewater use on each farm, according to soil type,topography and current landuse.
The purpose of mapping was to ensure maxi-mum reduction of surface water run-off/ground-water recharge was obtained from the publicmoney subsidizing on-farm plantings. The process
Figure 3. The Lake Warden system, showing seven major and many satellite wetlands, creeks flowing into and out of the system, and
Nature Reserves. Data supplied by Department of Planning and Infrastructure, Perth.
also familiarized farmers with the objectives of theNDRC and led to better community understandingof its overall goals. As a result, NDRC officers havecoordinated 350 km of fencing around remnantvegetation, improved habitats for indigenous ani-mals and plants with 1000 ha of streamline buf-fering (planting native species along drainageforeshores), and monitored planting by the privatesector of 7000 ha of deep rooted perennial pasturesand 5000 ha of farm forestry during 2002–2004.
After putting in place catchment-level pro-grams to reduce recharge and increase biodiversityvalues across the terrestrial catchment that werebased on results of substantial agricultural andlandscape ecological research (Lambeck et al.,2000; Short et al., 2000; Latta et al., 2002), man-agement effort in the NDRC was re-directed to-wards protecting specific high-value wetlands. Thisrequired research to define biological values morecomprehensively, especially for key habitats withinwetlands, and to understand the particular salini-sation processes occurring around the LakeWarden system. The aim was to build on results ofprevious research elsewhere to provide locallyaccurate information and to contribute, in the caseof hydrological data, to a numerical model ofsurface and groundwater interactions in the LakeWarden system (Marimuthu et al., in press). Themodel will allow the effect of various water man-agement scenarios to be examined in advance ofimplementation. Another initiative was to corelakebeds to obtain information about wetlandconditions during the recent past to help set con-dition targets for lakes. Catchment officers posedthe questions for investigation, coordinated re-search activities and took responsibility for inte-grating results into a management outcome.
Reducing threats to biodiversity is a complexand multi-faceted task that involves large amountsof data and complex decisions. EnvironmentalManagement Systems (see Font et al., 2001; http://www.iso14000-iso14001-environmental-manage-ment.com/), used widely in the private sector,provide one framework for decision-making andtracking whether management outcomes are beingachieved. However, less formal systems may bemore appropriate for NDRCs (see Wallace, 2001).The main components of a system being consid-ered for the Lake Warden NDRC are shown inFigure 4.
Discussion
Management of the Lake Warden NDRC hasbeen intimately linked with research. However,science-based management does not necessarilyrequire research and, before initiating any, man-agers should make sure the information they needdoes not already exist. Building links into existingsources of information is part of the managementprocess.
Research in the Lake Warden NDRC has beenfocused on providing answers to specific questionsand we attribute the success of the Lake Wardenprogram to keeping management-funded researchbound to management objectives, rather thancatchment officers having to extract relevantinformation from the results of studies of generalecological principles. It is also important to prior-itize issues needing research through sensitivity orrisk analysis so that return from research expen-diture is maximized in the same way as on-groundmanagement effort is allocated to areas where itwill achieve most. This emphasis on directed re-search and efficacious expenditure highlights theimportance of regular data analysis and programreview by managers (Wallace et al., 2003: 28).
Frameworks for decision-making, as well asmodels to help predict outcomes of managementactions in advance of on-ground works, areessential tools for managers. Inexperienced officersmay be overwhelmed by the breadth of issues inNDRCs (and most other catchment-scale wetlandmanagement), which can be summarized as: (1)large area of land to be managed and manystakeholders to deal with, (2) need to achieveoutcomes on a variety of land tenures throughboth direct action and advice or incentives, (3)incomplete information about biodiversity, (4)technically challenging issues of managing salini-sation, with limited information about the inter-action between hydrology and biodiversity, and (5)diverse array of other threats to biodiversity, suchas reduced rainfall because of global warming,lack of adequate riparian buffers, weed invasion,disease, and feral predators.
Management frameworks should include for-mal mechanisms for setting goals and targets,identifying threats, and developing responses(Wallace et al. 2003). This is not an endorsementof managerialism (Hood, 1991), however, with its
emphasis on process alone as sufficient to achieveoutcomes. Management frameworks improvedecision-making but they are only half the picture:the other half is familiarity with the landscape andassets being managed. Managers of biodiversitywill always struggle with decisions unless theyknow their landscape. It is this knowledge thatprovides the matrix within which results ofresearch and analysis of management options canbe interpreted.
One of the issues to emerge most strongly whenreviewing the NDRC program was that opportu-nities for managers to improve relevant skills arelimited. Most skills are derived from tertiarytraining, corporate development programs, andworking experience. From the NDRC perspective,most tertiary training is too concentrated on singlescientific disciplines or, when multi-disciplinary,provides too little training in critical evaluation ofdata, problem-solving processes and tools such assensitivity analysis. In Western Australia, the
Department of Conservation and Land Manage-ment offers corporate training through a graduaterecruit program oriented towards development ofpractical skills, on-ground conservation, parkmanagement and fire suppression. While thiscourse covers many of the Department’s activities,it does not meet the training needs of catchmentmanagers, particularly with respect to problemsolving, integrating scientific information, com-munity consultation, and working on agriculturalland. These shortcomings in training for managersare not restricted to wetland management, or toparticular agencies, and our purpose in pointingthem out is to encourage agency and universitystaff everywhere to think about how the situationcan be improved. Learning on the job through trialand error is a stressful process when accountabilityis high.
In conclusion, we have outlined some of theissues associated with facilitating transfer ofresearch results into management. We have
Figure 4. Major elements of an environmental monitoring system for the Lake Warden Natural Diversity Recovery Catchment.
41
briefly described management of a NDRC insouth-west Western Australia with three aims: (1)to illustrate the multi-disciplinary nature of wet-land management, (2) to highlight how strongly itis underpinned by science, and (3) to demonstratethat there is a continuum between research andmanagement. Management is often as muchabout clear-thinking analysis and goal setting ason-ground action. Frequently, the collection ofdata for analysis of management options requiresresearch, which is sometimes undertaken by‘researchers’ and sometimes by ‘managers’. Wesuggest that, rather surprisingly, managers them-selves often under-represent the analytical com-ponent of their work and their use of science. Awider appreciation of the importance of analysisin management by both researchers and manag-ers is likely to lead to closer collaborationand increased uptake of research results intomanagement.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Cameron Hennessy for hiscontributions to managing the Lake WardenNDRC, Sue Moore provided information aboutmanagement systems and research uptake, andKen Wallace, Andrew Boulton, Margaret Brock,and an anonymous referee made helpful commentson a draft of the manuscript.
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