Highland wetlands conservation

Protecting the nationally significant wetlands of the New England Tablelands, including the Ramsar listed Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve.

A single black swan swimming in the Little Llangothlin Lagoon
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Key information

This project will strengthen wetland habitat and resilience to protect threatened species and ecological communities in the highland wetlands of the New England Tablelands, including the Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve.  

This project will focus on preserving these animals and areas by:

  • controlling pests and weeds
  • revegetating the area
  • releasing Bells turtles into the area
  • improving community awareness.  

Project background

The rare near-natural lagoon of Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve is listed as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention because it supports threatened species and endangered ecological communities.  

The wetlands provide refuge for waterbirds during drought e.g. Pacific black duck, grey teal, Australasian bittern, Australasian shoveler, blue-billed duck, magpie geese, Eurasian coot, white-faced heron.

Key threats include:

  • domestic grazing/livestock impacts and human interference
  • excessive fertiliser use  
  • pest animals
  • habitat loss through land clearing, habitat fragmentation and invasive weeds
  • Bell’s turtle nest predation by foxes
  • climate change.

Traditional Owners’ ecological knowledge is being incorporated into management of associated local threatened species and ecological communities at the sites to enhance project outcomes.

This project is a continuation of work already undertaken by Northern Tablelands Local Land Services to protect the nationally significant Upland Wetlands, swamps, peatlands and marshes of the New England Tablelands. 

Project objectives

The primary outcome of the Highland Wetlands Conservation project is long-term maintenance, improvement and resilience of habitat and ecological communities in these important wetlands. 

The project will: 

Project delivery

Work includes:

  • conducting revegetation activities at the Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve Ramsar site in collaboration with Banbai Rangers on Country
  • increasing distribution of the critically endangered ecological community of New England Peppermint (Eucalyptus nova-anglica) Grassy Woodlands
  • enhancing wild populations of the endangered Bell’s turtle (Wollumbinia belli) through hatchling incubation and release in collaboration with the University of New England
  • improving land management practices that further protect wetland sites
  • conducting water quality and plant surveys across different wetland habitats to monitor the condition of our wetlands
  • enhancing habitat for the Australasian bittern (Botaurua poiciloptilus). 

Project timeline

2023–24: 

  • wetland plant surveys and water quality baseline surveys
  • project steering committee established (annual meetings)
  • contractor engagement
  • work activity planning
  • fencing/controlled access work
  • weed distribution survey at Little Llangothlin lagoon
  • revegetation of New England Peppermint at Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve
  • Wetlands Field Day and other community awareness and education events
  • Bell’s turtle eggs harvesting and incubation in the University of New England laboratory.

2025–27: 

  • facilitate University of New England’s Bell’s turtle hatchling releases in February to March each year
  • annual weed control works prior to revegetation
  • Wetlands Field Day (annually)
  • community education workshops with NSW Rural Fire Service Assets Management Committees
  • skills and knowledge surveys with wetland habitat land managers
  • annual follow-up of wetland plant and water quality monitoring surveys. 

2028: 

  • final Wetland Field Day at Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve
  • final workshop with NSW Rural Fire Service
  • habitat condition assessment follow-up surveys conducted across sample plots of New England Peppermint revegetation at Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve
  • final wetland plant and water quality monitoring surveys
  • Bell’s turtle hatchlings release
  • final project reporting. 

Work underway

  • Year 1 baseline plant and water quality monitoring surveys and reports completed.
  • First project steering committee meeting met in August 2024 with key delivery partners.
  • Wetlands Field Day held 20 September 2024 at Racecourse Lagoon, Uralla.
  • Family Fun Night held 18 April 2024 – spotlighting for frogs in the lagoon, a fun way to build the wonder of the wetlands into future generations of conservationists.
  • Year 1 of weed control and revegetation at Little Llangothlin Nature Reserve completed.  

How to get involved

Opportunities to engage with the work will be promoted through our social media sites, e-newsletters and local media as they become available. 

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Funding and partnerships

Local Land Services key delivery partners are:

This project is funded by the Australian Government Natural Heritage Trust and delivered by Northern Tablelands Local Land Services, a member of the Commonwealth Regional Delivery Partners panel. 

The Australian coat of arms and the words Australian Government below it.

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Local Land Services - the role of fire in wetland areas

This short film has been produced in response to an increased need to protect the “threatened Upland Wetlands of the New...

8:03

Local Land Services - the role of fire in wetland areas

This short film has been produced in response to an increased need to protect the “threatened Upland Wetlands of the New England Tablelands bioregion”. Our upland wetlands, unique in Australia to the Northern Tablelands, are under the ever-increasing threat of damage or destruction from fire. Northern Tablelands Local Land Services is undertaking four years of scientific monitoring, through funding from the Australian Government's National Landcare Program, together with on ground initiatives with landholders, to further understand and preserve our upland wetlands. The Rural Fire Service (RFS) is an important collaborator, not only in managing fire risk and control in the region, but has the world’s largest volunteer base, many of whom have a deep understanding of the land. This film attempts to bring to the RFS a better understanding of what these wetlands represent, how they ‘work’ in our region and what it means if they were ever allowed to burn.

Video transcript

Local Land Services - the role of fire in wetland areas

Introduction 

[Music] 

My name's John Hunter and I'm a - pretty much a researcher in landscape ecology and I've been up here in the Northern Tablelands forever since about 1986.

[Music] 

These upland wetlands are really precious because there's so few of them and they form in a really unusual way, in a way that doesn't happen anymore.

They're really dynamic they're unlike so many communities in the world, they're ephemeral, they're dynamic they change constantly. They change through seasons, they change through wetting and drying regimes they can be completely dry completely wet, they can be wet for years on end or they can be dry for years on end and every single one of these lagoons is an individual. How do they work, how do we manage them and how do we keep them conserved they have such a variety of systems within them it's so complex that is going to take decades for us to to understand them and that's what makes them exciting. 

Lagoons

One has to be very resilient and being able to pick a moment when everything's just right for itself and so a lot of the species have developed interesting adaptations, both the plants and the animals, in dealing with these unpredictable - predictable changes. The lagoons themselves are listed both on the federal act and on the state acts as endangered and so wherever they occur if they've got enough of the right features and they're not degraded too much, whether it's on private property or on public lands they are actually considered high conservation value.

So there's a number of threatened communities that occur, the Lagoon themselves are considered an endangered system but within them are a number of endangered communities as well, so there's Carrick sedge lands which are listed as an endangered community, which occur along the fringes of these lagoons and also this grasslands around the edge of the systems and these grasslands while not listed at the moment, probably should be because up here on the Northern Tablelands they're dominated by grasses that don't dominate any other grassland anywhere else in Australia. But then we get down to the species themselves and some of these lagoons have very interesting species that don't occur in any other place, there's a whole lot of fauna that need these systems and the dynamic of wetting and drying. 

Fire 

Fire's a really interesting situation with any community and it's always complex. The problem with fire is that people like to have a dichotomous view about, it it's either really good or it's really bad and there's no in-betweens and fire is complex. Within these upland wetlands, these lagoons, fire is not a natural component of them. One of the things about them is even during this really devastating drought period all of them that we know of completely dried out, but there's elements within that Lagoon that even if it could burn shouldn't be burnt and the reason is, is that these have a peaty layer. Some of this peat is really deep - meters and meters deep and that peaty layer is incredibly important during these really really dry periods.

The reason is, is that it's like a sponge that keeps the area moist, protects the seeds that are in those peaty layers and protects some of the animals, frogs and all sorts of insects that will survive in this damp peaty layer. 

In fact, we were surveying some of these lagoons and taking soil samples during the height of this last drought, and some of those lagoons were still damp, were still wet and this isn't from groundwater this is because that peat kept the moisture in having vegetation on the surface of this also stops that peat from drying out and cracking. So if we maintain the vegetation on top where the rejection occurs and we maintain the peat layer, then the system can cope with an extended dry period. 

But if we let fire get in there, fire can open up the vegetation dry out the peat so it cracks and dries out further and then it gets harder and harder for system to recover. On top of that of a fire gets into the peat, the peat can burn away. Now this is a important component of the lagoon that takes thousands of years to develop, particularly if it's very deep and once you burn that peat away, you may never get it back, particularly not in any of our lifetimes.

The importance of this vegetation that surrounds the lagoon is incredible because it's a buffer and this dense vegetation actually takes out a lot of the really bad stuff that comes with that Overland water flow and it's not really a fire threat most of these the lagoons are incredibly small systems with, tiny areas around them and they don't really represent a major fire hazard. The fire actually severely disrupts these systems on so many levels they're not supposed to be burned.

Management 

So managing a reserve sort of from highest-priority down, it's really fire, pests, weeds and then humans as in visitors, neighbours and they're all very important.

So every reserve in New South Wales has a fire management strategy. These strategies are developed first within parks and then together with their BFM see the bushfire management committee which has representatives from the RFS the Rural Fire Service, national parks, forestry, council and members of the public. We try and work out what's the best strategy for the park but the lagoon itself is there's no ecological reason to burn it to us and to the people, with the experience and a knowledge within the RFS and in national parks. 

It's obvious but some some of our neighbours might not have that same experience and and during the drought, there was worries about perceived fuel potentials within within the park and of course during that dry time, if we did have a lightning strike in here, probably would have taken because of the dry conditions.

I would have moved through the park with the wind direction and stopped at the fence most likely. This park is virtually all of it, can we consider the threatened ecological community which makes this this even yeah probably one of the most important national parks or park estate nature reserves within within the region. 

[Music]

For more information about the Highland Wetlands Conservation project, please contact the project lead, Anya Salmon.
Email: anya.salmon@lls.nsw.gov.au  
Mobile: 0455 481 170 

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