2015-10-13 Planning & Organisation Agenda Attachment 2 to Item 7 Noosa Estuary and Lakes Restoration Assessment Report

                                          Management options
North Shore                Create a “Restoration Zone” to restrict access
management/vehicle         Provide a buffer between recreational and commercial activities
closure                    Ensure that any conservation zone includes both terrestrial dunes, beach
                            and near-shore areas
Wake management            Manage boat speed and wake
“between the lakes”        Improve commercial boat design
Estuary zoning             Reduce the recreational catch
(emphasis on rec.          Increase catch and release programs including training / education
fishing)                   Provide support for improved fish habitat
                           Permitting
Cessation of               Closure of fishing areas particularly between the lakes
commercial prawn           Buyback of fishing licences
trawling                   Modified fishing practices
                           Decreased or limited catch (size or timing)
Better management of       Limit catch on Noosa North Shore
commercial mullet          Provide pathways to increase product value
fishery                    Modify fishing practices - education
Transform gill-net         Transform gill net industry to high value line caught industry
fishery to higher value
fishery
Stormwater                 Improve the quality of water runoff flowing into the estuary through
management                  wetlands and other design features such as flow restrictors and pollution
                            traps




Expert evaluation of options
Following the identification of the options presented above, the experts were asked to
provide their judgment on the likely consequence of these options for the indicators
identified earlier. Initially judgement was sought on whether undertaking the activities
associated with an option would lead directly to an increase (or possibly a decrease) in the
abundance of each indicator group, and then subsequently the relative magnitude of the
likely increase. These assessments are presented in Table 3.
In addition to assessing the consequence of options for the ecological indicators, the experts
were asked to identify other benefits likely to be associated with undertaking each option.
For each option, the expert group also identified some key uncertainties associated with the
option. These uncertainties can help flag priority science tasks needed in order to more
thoroughly evaluate that option. Where possible, the experts were asked for indicative costs
of the options. In most cases these costs were highly uncertain because there were different
ways that each option could be executed and financed. Finally, for each option the experts
were asked to conduct a pre-mortem. This is a risk identification exercise where each person
was asked to imagine that the option had been undertaken and it was now 5 years into the
future and something had gone very wrong with the project. Each person is then asked to
describe what they imagined went wrong with the project. This has proved an effective way


                                                                                                   8