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![]() Australian kangaroos, wombats, as well as a wealth of other plant and animal species are unique at a global scale. The freshwater biodiversity of Australia is highly distinctive due to millions of years of isolation, but more poorly known. The platypus is certainly the most widely recognized of the Australian stream fauna, but the riverine systems of eastern Australia also harbour numerous species of fish and invertebrates that are as unusual as they are beautiful. Nowhere is the need for freshwater more evident than in Australia, the driest continent on Earth. Much of the country's natural heritage depends on the availability of water, found in high altitude bogs and fens, and low lying rivers, lakes, marshes and freshwater meadows. Yet, the extent and condition of Australia's wetlands have deteriorated in recent decades; for example, one-third of Victoria's wetlands have already been destroyed. In many river basins, groundwater is being used faster than it is being replenished. Much of the Eastern Australian ecoregion depends on Murray-Darling river system, a network of watercourses that drains about 14 percent of the continent, including most of the territory of New South Wales and Victoria. Northern Queensland is drained by a series of smaller, but nonetheless, similarly important river systems. Worldwide, people have come to appreciate better the importance of freshwater ecosystems in providing ecological services and in supporting biological diversity. Conserving lakes, rivers, bogs and ponds has become an international concern, and Australia boasts some of the world's most important wetlands.
The Government of New South Wales has already identified 94 important
wetlands in its state, while another 121 sites have been similarly
recognized in Victoria. Yet in New South Wales, just four sites have
been listed under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International
Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat, while only 10 sites have
been registered in Victoria. Almost all of these Ramsar sites are
threatened by poor management and development plans.
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