Protecting private wetlands

Many wetland areas in NSW are on private property alongside agricultural land. Find out what you can do to protect and manage wetlands and lagoons on your property.

Overhead shot of a healthy wetland area
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About wetlands in NSW

Wetlands are communities of plants and animals that depend on water for all or part of their life cycle. They are environmentally, culturally and historically important to NSW. Around 4.5 million hectares, or 6% of NSW, are classified as wetlands.

Many wetland areas in NSW are within or alongside private property and agricultural communities. 

Why wetlands are important

Wetlands act as natural water regulators and filters. They capture floodwaters, slow them down and filter out nutrients and heavy metals.

Wetlands also support rich and diverse plant and animal life. This enhances the surrounding environment. Many wetlands dry out periodically. This process creates a broad range of habitats, which change over the cycles of flooding and drying.  

Healthy wetlands contribute to agricultural production. They are also important for education, research, recreation and tourism.

Threats to wetlands

Wetlands face several threats that reduce their health and biodiversity, including:

  • vegetation clearing
  • overgrazing by livestock
  • draining or other altered water regimes
  • contamination from excessive pesticide and fertiliser use
  • the presence of pest animals and plants such as carp, pigs and willows
  • the expansion of urban areas.

Understanding these pressures helps landholders plan effective protection and restoration actions.

How to protect wetlands on your property

You can support healthy wetlands and lagoons in a variety of ways:

  • minimise disturbance to wetlands on your property
  • erect fences to manage stock access to wet areas
  • establish a buffer zone between your wetland and grazing or cropping land
  • practice conservation farming techniques, including good chemical management
  • development a water management plan for your wetland
  • avoid clearing dead wood and trees from wetlands as they provide valuable native habitat
  • monitor the wetland area for weeds and pest animals regularly
  • restore wetlands and natural water flows, communicating your plans with your local community where possible
  • encourage native vegetation to grow in and around wetlands
  • allow low-lying back swamps to fill and drain naturally so they can provide productive native grazing species such as water couch.

Maintaining biodiverse wetlands

Wetland systems are important habitats and breeding areas for:

  • waterbirds
  • native fish and eels
  • turtles and frogs
  • insects
  • crustaceans
  • reptiles and other native animals.

Both permanent and ephemeral (also called temporary) wetlands provide essential habitat.

Permanent and ephemeral wetlands

Ephemeral wetlands dry out periodically. This drying cycle allows organic matter to decompose, which fuels productivity when water returns.

A broad range of habitats are created which change over cycles of flooding and drying.

Permanent wetlands provide year-round habitat and drought refuges for itinerant wetland birds and other animals and aquatic species. 

Both permanent and ephemeral wetlands are critical for biodiversity and ecological productivity.

Wetland vegetation

The vegetation in a wetland depends on several factors, including:

  • wetland shape and how it was formed (geomorphology)
  • water source and the pattern of flooding and drying (hydrology)
  • water depth and quality
  • salinity.

Wetland plants provide the basic food for a wide range of wildlife. Each type of wetland plant provides different habitat for native animals. The more plant species, the more diverse the range of habitats for wildlife. 

wetland plants in the foreground with a filled wetland body of water in the background

Wetland birds

Wetlands and lagoons provide habitat for many wetland birds. This includes threatened species and some that migrate from the northern hemisphere. 

Vast areas of wetlands have been drained or cultivated causing wetland birds to decline. The worst affected species are those that nest close to the ground. These birds have lost key habitat attributes and are highly susceptible to predation.

A range of on-ground works are underway to protect and restore wetland habitat through:

  • environmental watering
  • fencing
  • predator control
  • appropriate management. 

Conservation of wetland habitats is critical to support populations of wetland birds now and into the future.

Protecting wetland habitat

Ensure wetland areas receive and hold water

Flooding is the driving factor responsible for the existence and productivity of wetland birds. Wetlands often have variable flooding cycles. This depends on whether they are on a major waterway floodplain (for example, the Murray River) or from rainfall runoff. 

It is important to develop land management strategies to make sure that every wetland gets enough water and banks do not interfere with the flow. 

Respect your wetland areas

Avoid cropping within wetland zones to maintain soil structure.

Minimise the impact of grazing by limiting stock access to fringing wetland vegetation and reducing pugging of soil when it is wet.

Provide different layers of habitat

The diversity of birds occurring at a site can be increased by: 

  • providing different wetland and fringing vegetation layers;
  • maintaining and enhancing shrubs in wetlands (such as lignum and goosefoot)
  • retaining standing live and dead trees and fallen timber
  • having trees and shrubs adjoin wetlands to create habitat diversity.
Control pest animals

Spring and summer are key breeding seasons for wetland birds. Many nest on or near the ground and are vulnerable to predators. To help protect wetland birds and vegetation:

  • control foxes and feral cats through baiting or trapping
  • keep domestic pets away from wetland areas
  • manage rabbits to prevent overgrazing and loss of native plants.
Get involved in conservation

You can make a difference by taking part in local conservation programs.

Join community groups

Join Landcare, BirdLife Australia or local wetlands working groups. Take part in community clean-up or restoration activities.

Participate in surveys and monitoring

Join bird surveys or citizen science programs. Submit bird sightings to the Atlas of Australian Birds (BirdLife Australia).

Support pest management

Help with local pest eradication projects such as the spring fox drive. Share information and success stories to inspire others.

Wetland conservation success stories

8:03

The role of fire in wetland areas

This short film has been produced by Local Land Services in response to an increased need to protect the “threatened Upland Wetlands of the New England Tablelands bioregion”.

Read transcript
Video transcript

The role of fire in wetland areas

Introduction 

[Music] 

My name's John Hunter and I'm a - pretty much a researcher in landscape ecology and I've been up here in the Northern Tablelands forever since about 1986.

[Music] 

These upland wetlands are really precious because there's so few of them and they form in a really unusual way, in a way that doesn't happen anymore.

They're really dynamic they're unlike so many communities in the world, they're ephemeral, they're dynamic they change constantly. They change through seasons, they change through wetting and drying regimes they can be completely dry completely wet, they can be wet for years on end or they can be dry for years on end and every single one of these lagoons is an individual. How do they work, how do we manage them and how do we keep them conserved they have such a variety of systems within them it's so complex that is going to take decades for us to to understand them and that's what makes them exciting. 

Lagoons

One has to be very resilient and being able to pick a moment when everything's just right for itself and so a lot of the species have developed interesting adaptations, both the plants and the animals, in dealing with these unpredictable - predictable changes. The lagoons themselves are listed both on the federal act and on the state acts as endangered and so wherever they occur if they've got enough of the right features and they're not degraded too much, whether it's on private property or on public lands they are actually considered high conservation value.

So there's a number of threatened communities that occur, the Lagoon themselves are considered an endangered system but within them are a number of endangered communities as well, so there's Carrick sedge lands which are listed as an endangered community, which occur along the fringes of these lagoons and also this grasslands around the edge of the systems and these grasslands while not listed at the moment, probably should be because up here on the Northern Tablelands they're dominated by grasses that don't dominate any other grassland anywhere else in Australia. But then we get down to the species themselves and some of these lagoons have very interesting species that don't occur in any other place, there's a whole lot of fauna that need these systems and the dynamic of wetting and drying. 

Fire 

Fire's a really interesting situation with any community and it's always complex. The problem with fire is that people like to have a dichotomous view about, it it's either really good or it's really bad and there's no in-betweens and fire is complex. Within these upland wetlands, these lagoons, fire is not a natural component of them. One of the things about them is even during this really devastating drought period all of them that we know of completely dried out, but there's elements within that Lagoon that even if it could burn shouldn't be burnt and the reason is, is that these have a peaty layer. Some of this peat is really deep - meters and meters deep and that peaty layer is incredibly important during these really really dry periods.

The reason is, is that it's like a sponge that keeps the area moist, protects the seeds that are in those peaty layers and protects some of the animals, frogs and all sorts of insects that will survive in this damp peaty layer. 

In fact, we were surveying some of these lagoons and taking soil samples during the height of this last drought, and some of those lagoons were still damp, were still wet and this isn't from groundwater this is because that peat kept the moisture in having vegetation on the surface of this also stops that peat from drying out and cracking. So if we maintain the vegetation on top where the rejection occurs and we maintain the peat layer, then the system can cope with an extended dry period. 

But if we let fire get in there, fire can open up the vegetation dry out the peat so it cracks and dries out further and then it gets harder and harder for system to recover. On top of that of a fire gets into the peat, the peat can burn away. Now this is a important component of the lagoon that takes thousands of years to develop, particularly if it's very deep and once you burn that peat away, you may never get it back, particularly not in any of our lifetimes.

The importance of this vegetation that surrounds the lagoon is incredible because it's a buffer and this dense vegetation actually takes out a lot of the really bad stuff that comes with that Overland water flow and it's not really a fire threat most of these the lagoons are incredibly small systems with, tiny areas around them and they don't really represent a major fire hazard. The fire actually severely disrupts these systems on so many levels they're not supposed to be burned.

Management 

So managing a reserve sort of from highest-priority down, it's really fire, pests, weeds and then humans as in visitors, neighbours and they're all very important.

So every reserve in New South Wales has a fire management strategy. These strategies are developed first within parks and then together with their BFM see the bushfire management committee which has representatives from the RFS the Rural Fire Service, national parks, forestry, council and members of the public. We try and work out what's the best strategy for the park but the lagoon itself is there's no ecological reason to burn it to us and to the people, with the experience and a knowledge within the RFS and in national parks. 

It's obvious but some some of our neighbours might not have that same experience and and during the drought, there was worries about perceived fuel potentials within within the park and of course during that dry time, if we did have a lightning strike in here, probably would have taken because of the dry conditions.

I would have moved through the park with the wind direction and stopped at the fence most likely. This park is virtually all of it, can we consider the threatened ecological community which makes this this even yeah probably one of the most important national parks or park estate nature reserves within within the region. 

[Music]

4:39

Every Bit Counts #6: Wilfords Lane (Burrill Lake) Wetland, Milton

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