Wetland Watch solutions for Swan Coastal Plain wetlands

What WWF has done to preserve the WA wetlands

WWF-Australia initiated the Wetland Watch project in 2003 to urgently secure the conservation of high-value wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain.

The project focused on those wetlands without protective mechanisms and those under significant threat, particularly on private land.

How Wetland Watch worked

The project’s priorities were to increase awareness and participation among land owners and land managers for improved wetland management and conservation.

This involved conducting education events and activities, as well as brokering a range of incentives for land owners and managers. These incentives included technical advice, devolved grants, voluntary management agreements and conservation covenants.

Conservation covenants were harder to negotiate among wheatbelt landholders for two reasons:

• landholder property rights and land value speculation often made land managers wary of locking in a particular land use management prescription for their land

• unlike remnant wheatbelt bushland, which is usually owned entirely by one landholder, wetlands commonly cut across more than one holding. Unless all landholders concerned agree to a covenant and the same conditions, such negotiations are ineffective.

History of Wetland Watch

Wetland Watch commenced as a 12-month pilot in 2003. In addition to the actual wetland conservation objectives, the pilot project sought to evaluate the effectiveness of Wetland Watch and to investigate whether it could be applied to other priority areas.

In early 2005, Wetland Watch was recognised as a key action in securing the conservation of wetlands on private land within the Perth Natural Resource Management (NRM) region. As a result, WWF was able to secure project funding for the 2005–2008 financial years through the Perth NRM – a community-led regional group with responsibility for co-ordinating and delivering natural resource management in the Perth metropolitan region.

Wetland Watch expanded north to the Ellen Brockman catchment area in 2006. At the same time, WWF attracted additional funding for a pilot project (“Balancing Agriculture Productivity with Conservation”) in the neighbouring Gingin area, which looked at engaging land managers with high conservation value wetlands.

In 2008, Wetland Watch wrapped up in the Perth metropolitan area. A year later, with new funding, WWF moved south to focus on the fastest growing regional centre in Western Australia – the Peel-Harvey area – where concentrated residential and canal developments as well as mixed agriculture were placing increasing pressures on wetlands in this Ramsar -listed region¹.

Wetland Watch operated for seven years and achieved great results in increasing the protection, management and restoration of fragile and high conservation value wetlands primarily under private ownership.

^{1. For seven years, Wetland Watch successfully increased the protection, management and restoration of fragile and high conservation value wetlands in WA, primarily those under private ownership.}