Integrating Effort for Regional Natural Resource Outcomes: The Wet Tropics Experience

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[Extract] World Heritage listing in the late 1980s delivered a significant slice of Australia's Wet Tropical landscape to biodiversity conservation and associated ecotourism activities. The wider region, however, comprises a complex social, cultural and natural landscape of multiple uses, values and resource types. The health of this landscape, in turn, contributes to the health of the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, another natural icon of international significance. Following World Heritage listing, a flurry of fragmented planning for the region resulted in the regulatory frameworks that defined the broad limits for sustainable use of the region's resources. These approaches, however, were not designed to progress the integrated and sustainable management of these resources within those limits. Continued biodiversity loss, the ongoing loss of productive soils and poor water quality flowing into the reef lagoon were the result.