The National Reserve System is the centrepiece of nationally coordinated efforts to conserve our unique and globally significant biodiversity. This is achieved through a network of national parks, nature reserves, marine reserves, Indigenous protected areas and privately protected areas. Expanding these protected areas offers a strategic approach to address increasing threats from inappropriate land use, invasive species and the impacts of climate change.
Australia’s First Nations people have a continuing history of caring for Country, with archaeological evidence showing land management techniques spanning tens of thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. The unique ecosystems, flora and fauna that colonisers encountered upon arrival on the continent were a product of intricate and millenia-long interaction with Indigenous peoples, across multiple different contexts and inseparable from cultural practice and on-country activities. European arrival and colonisation resulted in an ongoing set of shocks to these systems that Australia continues to face today.
In more recent history, Australia’s first National Park – Royal National Park in New South Wales – was declared in 1879. While protected area growth since this has been approached in different ways by successive state, territory and federal governments, the last three decades have seen continent-wide efforts to expand the protected area estate.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, the NRS initiative established collaborative efforts between federal, state and territory governments, First Nations communities, non-government organisations and private landowners. Within a robust scientific framework and bipartisan support, the NRS established time-bound targets and criteria to protect the full suite of species, habitats and ecosystems across Australia’s diverse landscapes.
Using a bioregional approach (the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia) and the concept of a CAR reserve system, government agencies began to systematically grow protected areas, targeting underrepresented ecosystems, critical habitat for threatened species and building connectivity. These criteria incorporate both coarse and fine filters for biodiversity conservation. This includes assessing the reservation levels of landscapes at a bioregional or subregional level and at the ecosystem level within bioregions. A bioregional approach ensures the historic biases in protecting the easiest and most scenic areas does not undermine the systematic distribution of protected areas across all environments.
Australia’s existing framework is well suited to delivering key features of Target 3, by including areas of particular importance for biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services, and by ensuring protected area systems are ecologically representative and well-connected. A CSIRO review of the NRS (including the CAR principles) concluded that the strategy underpinning the NRS is likely to be highly robust in the face of significant environmental change in Australia.