Innovative techniques for managing multiple threats to high value aquatic systems

Product Information

This four-year multidisciplinary R&D project, supported by a range of agencies and organisations leveraged off core funding by Land & Water Australia, aimed to rehabilitate Dowd Morass, a 1,500 ha Ramsar-listed wetland fringing Lake Wellington (Gippsland Lakes, south-eastern Victoria).  A substantial component of the R&D project involved the landscape-scale manipulation of water regimes using as BACI-type experimental design. 

Five main lessons were learnt from this R&D project. 

• the involvement of the regional community and NRM agencies is essential for successful rehabilitation of degraded wetlands.
• anecdotal evidence on changes in wetland condition is no replacement for empirical, quantitative, fact-based assessments.  In this case, we used a series of historical aerial photographs, going back to the early 1960s, to describe the spatial changes in vegetation. 
• despite the importance placed in NHT-type projects on revegetation, efforts to revegetate coastal wetlands with tube-stock may be spectacularly unsuccessful.  The poor success was probably a function of high salinity, inappropriate water regimes and the presence of acid-sulfate soils.  Revegetation success may be improved by planting seedlings on mounds or hummocks.
• landscape-scale hydrological manipulations are fraught with risk.  We had serious problems with vandalism, and unusual weather over the past 4 years played havoc with our attempts to control water levels. 
• differences in objectives among institutions and stakeholders complicate attempts at wetland rehabilitation and environmental-water applications.