2021-06-17 OM Agenda - Item 2 - Attachment 1 - Draft Noosa Bushland Reserve Strategic Management Plan 2021-2026

4.2    Ecosystem Services Values
Ecosystem Services are the goods and services freely delivered by ecosystems that contribute to
the environmental, social and economic well-being of the Noosa community, and to the well-being
of the national and global community. These services are classified in accordance with
Classification of Ecosystem Services by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA. 2005), and
are as follows:

1.    Regulating services: benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes such as water
      regulation, erosion regulation, waste regulation, climate regulation and natural hazard regulation
      (e.g. droughts, floods, and storms).

2.    Supporting services: those that are necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services.
      They differ from provisioning, regulating, and cultural services in that their impacts on people are
      often indirect or occur over a very long time, whereas changes in the other categories have
      relatively direct and short-term impacts on people. Some services, like erosion regulation, can be
      categorised as both a supporting and a regulating service, depending on the time- scale and
      immediacy of their impact on people. Supporting services include primary production, nutrient
      cycling and water cycling.

3.    Provisioning services: products obtained from ecosystems, e.g. fresh water, food, fibre, fuel,
      genetic resources, biochemical, natural medicines and pharmaceuticals.

4.    Cultural services: non-material benefits people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual
      enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences, e.g. cultural
      diversity, knowledge systems, educational values, social relations, sense of place, cultural heritage
      and ecotourism.

The values these ecosystems provide are a key reason for creating a network of environmental
reserves throughout the Noosa Shire. Without our reserve network, and those of other agencies
such as national parks, some of these ecosystem services would be lost to the Noosa community.
This includes the role or riparian vegetation in reducing erosion and keeping our rivers clean, or the
role of coastal foredunes is providing a green buffer to the impacts of climate change.

While the provision of these services is greatly enhanced by having retained habitat in a bushland
reserve network, the relative values of these services provided are not always the first
consideration when allocating resources in the management of the reserve network that is already
in place. This is because some of these values can contradict each other. For example, weed
encroachment into environments can reduce biodiversity values significantly, but at the same time
they can provide similar services in areas like water filtration or dune stabilisation. As a result, for
prioritisation of day-to-day management, ecosystem services are considered as a subset of the
biodiversity outcomes sought by this plan.

A focus on “likelihood of success” within this plan is intended to provide a long-term improvement
in ecosystem condition and, by extension, the quality of ecosystem services. While priority
reserves are worked though, a triage approach is taken to the remaining network with annual
inspections and management of emerging issues, such as new weed species with a high
probability of impact.

Some specific examples of Ecosystem Services that Council’s bushland reserve network
contribute to include but are not limited to catchment values, recreational values, landscape and
scenic amenity values and climate change amelioration.




Noosa Bushland Reserves Strategic Management Plan 2021 – 2026                                           Page 15