Protection and management

Abstract

Once sites of high conservation value have been defined and selected, it is important to establish some form of protection for them. The premier step is to decide where the boundaries should be (Lomolino, 1994). Theoretically these should follow the watersheds of catchments to ensure control of the quality of all incoming water but this is rarely possible in practice, especially for the larger water bodies. Efforts should be made to acquire as wide a band as possible of the surrounding land within the proposed reserve or at least to designate such an area as a buffer zone. Adverse threats to the site will have been taken into account during the selection process and, where these are of such a magnitude as to seriously threaten the viability of a site, the site will have been rejected.