Multiple Use and Nature Conservation in South Australia's Arid Zone.

Abstract

Public interest in the arid zone has led to a huge expansion of South Australia's arid conservation reserve system since the early 1980s. As the arid reserve system expanded, there was accommodation of other land users under existing legislation. Other uses are tourism and recreation, exploration and mining, Aboriginal land uses and grazing. Expansion of the reserve system into the State's rangelands and into the oil and gas rich Cooper Basin led to the designation of a new reserve category, known as the Regional Reserve, which explicitly affords resource exploitation a place alongside conservation. The multiple use concept has allowed some key areas to be brought into South Australia's reserve system with relative ease. Innamincka was the first Regional Reserve and, to date, is the most complex of the multiple use reserves; tourism, petroleum exploration and production, and grazing take place in it. The multiple use concept assumes that more than one use can be managed in space and time without significant detriment to conservation values. It implies an acceptance of human-induced changes to natural systems, but does not resolve concerns about the acceptable limits to change. The question of who bears the cost of management and monitoring of multiple use reserves remains unresolved. There is an opportunity for conservation objectives to play a more central role in the management of arid lands which fall outside the reserve system. Careful, conservative management regimes in multiple use reserves will greatly increase the chances of a favourable outcome for nature conservation.