National Wetlands Research and Development Program
About the National Wetlands Research and Development Program
The National Wetlands Research and Development Program (NWRDP), funded from 1996 to 2000, was established to support the conservation and sustainable management of wetlands on private and public lands through strategic research and development. The focus of the NWRDP was on providing funding support for management related research, particularly in regard to the application of the wise use principle.
Ensuring a sound scientific basis for policy and management was identified as one of the six major areas requiring priority action under the Wetlands Policy of the Commonwealth Government of Australia. The NWRDP was specifically identified in the Wetlands Policy as a mechanism for developing and supporting a strategic and coordinated wetlands research effort.
NWRDP objectives
The NWRDP's mission was to support the conservation, rehabilitation, restoration and long-term sustainable management of wetlands by the government and private sectors in Australia through targeted research and development.
The NWRDP's objectives were:
- investigate the following broad themes with a view to providing policy makers, decision makers and managers with the information needed to promote the conservation, rehabilitation, restoration and long-term sustainable management of wetlands
- the role of water regimes on the biotic processes in wetlands and the consequences of modifying these regimes
- the impacts on wetlands of contamination by nutrients, salts and other toxic compounds and ways to restore natural processes following these impacts
- the impacts of grazing and cropping practices on wetlands and ways to manage these uses to retain the ecological functions of wetlands
- the processes by which wetlands are invaded by plant and animal pests and mechanisms for their control and prevention
- develop monitoring protocols and rapid assessment methods for determining wetland health to assist diagnosis of wetland stress and performance measures for management, rehabilitation and restoration programs
- review and document appropriate methods for valuing the non-market values of wetlands, which will assist governments and private landholders with decision-making on alternative uses of wetlands
- identify the most effective mechanisms to transfer the information and technology gathered through the above to ensure it is readily available for application by policy makers, decision makers and managers
Funded projects
The three-year NWRDP agreement (1996/97 to 1999/00) enabled funding to be provided for projects where meaningful results could only be achieved by ongoing research over several consecutive years. Consequently the NWRDP Management Committee commissioned ten projects to meet this objective with a further project commissioned and funded in November 1998. The eleven projects and their Project Investigators were:
- Changing water regimes and wetland habitat on the Lower Murrumbidgee Floodplain of the Murrumbidgee River in Arid Australia
Dr Richard Kingsford: NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service - The effect of flow on nutrients on wetland habitats: "Floodplain/Wetland Processes in the Lower Balonne System"
Dr Martin Thoms: Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology, University of Canberra - How do water regime and grazing alter the reproductive capacity of aquatic plants?
Dr Margaret Brock: Botany Department, The University of New England - Implications of nutrient enrichment on managing primary productivity in wetlands
Dr P C Bailey: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Monash University and Dr P Boon: Department of Biological and Food Sciences, Victoria University of Technology - Modelling ecological responses to water regimes in arid zone wetlands
Dr Jim Puckridge: River Murray Laboratory, Dept of Zoology, University of Adelaide - Monitoring Wetlands Health: Are National River Health Program protocols applicable?
Dr Jenny Davis: Murdoch University - The availability of wetland habitat for waterbirds in arid Australia
Professor Alistair Robertson: School of Science and Technology, Charles Sturt University - The private and social values of wetlands
Professor Jeff Bennett: Asia Pacific School of Economics and Management (APSEM), The Australian National University - Weed management and the biodiversity and ecological processes of tropical wetlands
Dr Michael Douglas & Dr Stuart Bunn: Northern Territory University - Identifying and Monitoring Change in Wetland Inundation and Vegetation Patterns, Alligator Rivers Region, NT
Associate Professor Anthony Milne: School of Geography and Centre for Remote Sensing and GIS, University of New South Wales - Integrating wetlands R&D and on-ground wetland management: scoping study
Shankariah Chamala and G. S. Baxter from the School of Natural Rural Systems Management, University of Queensland, and Milton Coughenour, University of Kentucky, USA
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