WETLAND ASSESSMENTS IN THE BAFFLE CATCHMENT

 

 

Various wetlands were visited last week in the Baffle catchment as part of a wetland inventory and prioritisation project run by WetlandCare Australia. The project has been jointly funded by the Burnett Mary Regional Group and the Federal Government’s Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, with the support of Queensland’s Environmental Protection Agency.

 

The project aims to ground-truth and collect baseline field data for Burnett/Mary region wetlands which have been mapped by EPA under the Great Barrier Reef Coastal Wetlands Protection Programme (CWPP). Once this inventory has been undertaken, sites will be prioritised in order to identify key on-ground works and management initiatives for the future.

 

WetlandCare Australia project officer Rebecca Burnett travelled around the Baffle catchment conducting the first round of assessments on wetlands in order to determine the condition of these sites.

 

“The Baffle catchment contains various types of wetlands such as paperbark swamps, reed bed swamps, spring fed lagoons and wallum heath lands.” Rebecca said.

 

These wetlands all play an important role in maintaining biodiversity, improving water quality as well as playing a major part in reducing sediment, pesticide and nutrient loads entering freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, including the Great Barrier Reef.

 

The next step for the project is to prioritise wetlands in the Baffle catchment using a combination of expert input and the wetland assessments conducted. This will determine which wetlands need future management to maintain or improve their condition.

 

Wetland assessments will follow in the Burnett/Kolan, Mary and coastal catchments over the coming months.

 

Many thanks must go to all the landholders that kindly allowed assessments to be conducted on their property.

 

For more information, please contact Rebecca Burnett on (07)4121 1933.

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