• Change text size
• Skip to content

Caring for our Country

What is NRM?

• About us
• Contact us

Search:

Home

• What is Natural Resource Management (NRM)?
  • What's an NRM region?
  • What's an NRM plan?
  • Who manages NRM?
  • Policies, agreements and frameworks
• What can I do?
  • Building capacity
  • Engaging communities
  • For landholders
  • Find a facilitator
  • Indigenous communities and NRM
  • NRM discussion forum
  • Volunteer
• Funding
  • Community Coastcare
  • Environmental Stewardship
  • National Reserve System
  • Open Grants
  • Reef Rescue
  • Threatened Species Network
  • Working on Country
  • The future of NRM funding
  • Principles and policies
  • A-Z list
• Funded projects
  • Open Grants announcement
  • NSW
  • Vic
  • Qld
  • SA
  • WA
  • Tas
  • NT
  • ACT
• Data, maps and research
  • Atlases
  • Spatial data
  • Reporting tools
  • Managing data
• Monitoring and evaluation
  • Setting and reporting on targets
  • Measuring performance through indicators
  • National and regional evaluations
• Publications
  • Agreements
  • Annual reports
  • Books and reports
  • Brochures
  • Case studies
  • Fact sheets
  • Frameworks
  • Guidelines
  • Legislation
  • Links
  • Logos
  • Media releases
  • Newsletters
  • Policies
  • Strategies

Sydney Metro - Natural Resource Management region

Regional summary

The Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority area covers 1840 square kilometres and supports a population of over three million people. The area extends from Narrabeen Lakes in the north, through the Royal National Park to Stanwell Park in the south and west to include Blacktown and Campbelltown. The area encompasses six Local Aboriginal Land Council boundaries: Deerubbin, Gandangara, Illawarra, La Perouse, Metropolitan and Tharawal.

The area contains Australia's most famous waterway, Sydney Harbour, three nationally listed threatened plant communities, a recently listed place of National Heritage, Australia's oldest national park and nationally and internationally significant wetlands.

The region has a variety of landscapes including bushland, foreshores, waterways, market gardens, densely developed urban areas, industrial estates, coastal cliffs and sand dunes. Major industries include finance, property and business, extractive and manufacturing industries and tourism.

Local government and NSW agencies are key investors in natural resource management (NRM), with local government being the largest land managers. Partnerships and coordination with these agencies is the key to improved NRM in the Sydney basin. Coordination and partnerships with the areas six Local Aboriginal Land Councils is also critical as they have significant land holdings in the catchment management authorities' area.

Priority issues

Key natural resource management issues in the region include:

• contaminated site management
• urban development pressures
• feral animals and environmental weeds
• water quality (excess nutrients and industrial pollutants) in rivers and streams
• effluent and stormwater management
• cultural heritage protection
• declines in native vegetation and biodiversity

Regional plan

The former Southern Sydney and Sydney Harbour Catchment Management Boards - predecessors to the current Sydney Metro Catchment Management Authority - prepared integrated NRM plans, the blueprints, for what is now the Sydney Metro region, incorporating social, economic and environmental elements of NRM.

These blueprints are based on a whole-of-catchment approach and set 10-year catchment condition targets for the priority NRM issues of the region. They outline the tasks that need to be accomplished to achieve these targets.

These blueprints form the basis for the development of Investment Strategies that are used to attract funding from the Australian and state governments, and from other sources, for the specific actions identified in the Investment Strategy.

Through the Natural Heritage Trust (the Trust) funding, the Sydney Metro Catchment Management Authority establishment team provides coordination, information, and planning support to resource managers to encourage strong community involvement in the region's NRM, and fosters projects and practical activities that benefit the environment and the community.

Current activities

NRM priority	Activities addressing the priority
Biodiversity	conserve and enhance biodiversity through local government planning using educational workshops, promotional material, corridor mapping and on-ground works, preferably using local native plant stock introducing weed management initiatives including; identifying and prioritising weed hotspots; control of weeds of national significance, such as Alligator Weed and Ludwigia sp., educational tools specific to weed management for community, industry, nurseries and local governments identifying causes and offering solutions for the loss of fish passages in urbanised waterways
Capacity building	educating, training and providing administrative support to facilitate and increase community participation in on-ground action
Planning	providing information on viable options on engineering solutions for stormwater management to help coordinate cost-effective urban stream rehabilitation while achieving maximum ecological benefit mapping for terrestrial riverine corridor vegetation communities and in stream freshwater habitat values developing and implementing a system to collect and disseminate information on the natural values such as vegetation, threatened species, terrestrial and aquatic habitat, as well as identifying opportunities to protect and enhance connectivity mapping estuarine plants to provide the foundation for an agreed approach to site-specific assessment and long term monitoring

Contacts

Further information can be obtained by contacting the Regional Facilitators for New South Wales.