Water
Safeguarding Tasmania’s Vital Water Resources
The Water Theme encompasses Tasmania’s key water assets, which include rivers and estuaries, wetlands and waterbodies, and coastal and marine systems.
Tasmania’s water assets support multiple primary industries including agriculture, fishing, and aquaculture. They also support community-dependent infrastructure systems for hydro-electric power generation, drinking water supply and wastewater treatment, ports, and marine traffic.
The built environment is concentrated near the state’s water assets. The combined influence of climate change, development and land use change, human movement and population change, and ageing infrastructure, is increasing pressure on water assets.
Further, emerging priorities may be associated with threats to Assets that are due to climate-driven events such as drought, bushfire and flood, and these are likely to be ongoing issues in managing water resources.
Protection and management of water resources is closely linked with land management, including some actions listed in the Land Theme (e.g. soil and erosion management and resilient landscapes) and Biodiversity Theme (e.g. aquatic threatened species and important vegetation communities, including riparian vegetation).
The delivery of actions across all Themes will contribute to the health of Tasmania’s water resources.
Rivers, Floodplains and Estuaries
The movement of fresh surface and groundwaters through the landscape supports ecological, economic, and social values. Ecological values of catchments and estuaries, and current and emerging threats in receiving waters are used to identify Priorities and Actions for rivers, floodplains, and estuaries.
Wetlands and other Waterbodies
Wetlands and other waterbodies include internationally recognised wetlands of significance under the Ramsar Convention, which support high-value ecological communities. Nationally and regionally important wetlands and other water bodies are recognised for their conservation value.
Coastal and Marine Areas
Supporting land managers to improve soil condition and manage vegetation cover to improve natural values, biodiversity, and production outcomes and mitigate emerging risks.
Water in Tasmania
A snapshot of Tasmania’s water assets
48 Water Catchments
Approximately 150,000 km of river systems
Longest rivers:
- South Esk – 252 km (North)
- Derwent – 239 km (South)
- Arthur –172 km (Cradle Coast)
10 Ramsar Wetlands
Internationally significant wetlands covering 26,000 ha
- 10 Ramsar wetlands ranging in size from 7 ha to 4,517 ha
- 89 nationally important wetland
113 Estuaries
Moderate to large in size
- 68 critical/high conservation value estuary systems
3030KLM of Coastline
2,237 km of mainland coastline
- 900 beaches
- 9 Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia bioregions
- Over 300 islands with 10 over 5,000 ha in size
10 Marine Conservation Areas
Covering 135,000 ha
- 7 Marine Nature Reserves
- 3 Australian Marine Parks
Current NRM Water Projects & Initiatives
Scaling Nature-based Solutions for Flood Resilience and Recovery
About the project In the aftermath of the devastating 2016 floods, Tasmania’s three NRMs (NRM North, NRM South and Cradle Coast NRM) implemented Nature-based Solutions (NbS) across their region to rehabilitate agricultural land and support on-going flood resilience. ...
Improving habitat in the Mersey River estuary for threatened species
About the project This project aims to improve the foreshore and estuarine environments of the Mersey River for Eastern Curlew, Australasian Bittern, Australian Grayling and other native species. Key project outcomes include control of Rice Grass in the threatened...
Maugean Skate Recovery – Healthy Harbour Project
About the project This project delivers urgent recovery actions required to reduce the Maugean Skate’s (Zearaja maugeana) extinction risk. CCA’s Healthy Harbour project team collaborates with the Strahan and West Coast community to improve public understanding and...
Celebrating the coastal wetlands of Circular Head
About the project Showcasing the unique beauty of the Robbins Passage – Boullanger Bay tidal wetlands and highlighting the ecological, economic and social values of this place for the Circular Head and Cradle Coast community. This project builds on years of...
Creating a Hooded Plover Stronghold on Three Hummock Island – Part 3
About the project Cradle Coast NRM is working to create a stronghold for the Hooded Plover (Thinornis rubricollis), a priority threatened species, on Three Hummock Island by reducing feral cat predation, a significant threat to Hooded Plovers. This project continues...