1.3.1.2.1 Ecological assets

Two natural resource management organisations (NRMs) contributed data to the WAIT database. These NRM-nominated assets were added to the asset database. When the Hunter subregion was defined in 2012, it largely fell within the Hunter Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority (CMA) area, with a small area within the Namoi CMA. From 1 January 2014, NSW CMAs transitioned into local land services (LLS) regions, however, the data continues to be attributed to the CMAs. Most of the assets from the Hunter Central River CMA data (348 out of 352) and all of the assets from the Namoi CMA (38) are classed as ecological assets.

Other data sources used to define ecological assets in the Hunter subregion are listed in Table 3. Some of the elements obtained from the State and Australian Government data sources duplicate elements provided by the Hunter Central Rivers CMA. This means that within the total asset number, the same asset could be counted multiple times, for example, the Avoca groundwater-dependent ecosystem is included in: the WAIT database as an NRM-nominated asset (Department of the Environment, Dataset 4); the Directory of Important Wetlands (Department of the Environment, Dataset 6); the Atlas of Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems (Bureau of Meteorology, Dataset 7); and the NSW Wetlands 2006 (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Dataset 13).

Table 3 includes assets that were identified by local and state government workshop participants during the Hunter assets workshop in April 2015 (see Section 1.3.1.4). Additional species were added to the database, based on spatial information from the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and NSW Threatened Species and Ecological Communities distributions. Not all assets suggested at the workshops made it into the asset list for the Hunter subregion because they either failed the ‘fit-for-BA’ test or were not in the PAE. The fit-for-BA test is intended to ensure that data included in the water-dependent asset register meets BA quality. The tests enable the exclusion of duplicate data, irrelevant data, superseded data and data with inadequate information content (e.g. lacking spatial coverage). Details are provided in Section 1.3.2.

Table 3 Data sources for ecological assets in the asset list for the Hunter subregion

Dataset^a	Dataset citation	Elements	Assets (in asset list)
Water Asset Information Tool (WAIT) database	Australian Government Department of the Environment (Dataset 4)	20,433	386
Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database (CAPAD)	Australian Government Department of the Environment (Dataset 5)	68	68
A directory of Important Wetlands in Australia (DIWA)	Australian Government Department of the Environment (Dataset 6)	550	17
Atlas of Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems including: subsurface presence of groundwater data surface expression of groundwater	Bureau of Meteorology (Dataset 7)	67,265 873	160 74
Threatened ecological communities listed under the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act)	Australian Government Department of the Environment (Dataset 8)	2510	7
Threatened species listed under the EPBC Act	Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 9)	15,766	146
Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar wetlands)	Australian Government Department of the Environment (Dataset 10)	2	2
Birds Australia Important Bird Areas	Birds Australia (Dataset 11)	7	7
New South Wales High Probability Groundwater Dependent Vegetation with High Ecological Value	NSW DPI (Office of Water) (Dataset 12)	50,635	452
NSW State Wetlands 2006	NSW DECCW^b (Dataset 13)	762	98
Estuarine Macrophytes	NSW DPI – Fisheries (Dataset 14)	10,782	28
Cameron’s Gorge Grassy White Box Endangered Ecological Community EEC 3822	NSW OEH (Dataset 15)	1	1
Lower Hunter Spotted Gum Forest Endangered Ecological Community EEC 2319	NSW OEH (Dataset 16)	57	12
Gosford Council Endangered Ecological Communities (Umina woodlands) EEC 3906	NSW OEH (Dataset 17)	1	1
Climate Change Corridors Coastal - North East NSW	NSW DECCW^b (Dataset 18)	7	6
Climate Change Corridors Dry - North East NSW	NSW DECCW^b (Dataset 19)	42	33
Climate Change Corridors Moist - North East NSW	NSW DECCW^b (Dataset 20)	8	8
Climate Change Corridors - Nandewar_NET	NSW DECCW^b (Dataset 21)	1	1
Fauna Corridors North East NSW	NSW DECCW^b (Dataset 22)	461	197
NSW Travelling Stock Reserve Conservation Values	NSW DECCW^b (Dataset 23)	119	119
NSW Native Vegetation Management (NVM)	NSW OEH (Dataset 24)	815	5
Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) Beady Pipefish (Hippichthys penicillus) Booroolong Frog (Litoria booroolongensis)	NSW OEH (Dataset 39)	275	4
NSW Fishing and Aquaculture – Listed threatened species, populations and ecological communities Darling Hardyhead (Craterocephalus amniculus)	NSW DPI – Fisheries (Dataset 40)	30	1
NSW Threatened species and ecological communities Wallum Froglet (Crinia tinnula Green-thighed Frog (Litoria brevipalmata)) Red-crowned Toadlet (Pseudophryne australis)	Office of Environment and Heritage, Department of Premier and Cabinet (Dataset 38)	20	3
Total		171,490	1,836

^aThe asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) is a collation of all these source datasets. Some assets may be captured in multiple databases.

^bNSW Office of Environment and Heritage (NSW OEH) is custodian of these datasets generated by the former NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water (NSW DECCW).

NSW OEH = New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage; NSW DPI = New South Wales Department of Primary Industries; ALA = Atlas of Living Australia

Last updated:

18 January 2019

Product Finalisation date

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