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Integration has become something of a byword for those concerned with environmental planning and management in Australia in recent years. Yet efforts to collaborate with non-state actors in policy development and implementation, and to co-ordinate local, state and federal government policies and activities suggest that integration can become an amorphous and often ambiguous goal. This article draws on recent collaborative and co-ordination efforts to address water quality issues in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef region to highlight some of these challenges. A preliminary assessment shows how a Reef-wide collaborative water quality partnership has risen to the challenge of integration. To date, this large-scale collaboration has focussed on co-ordinating a defensible knowledge-base to guide water quality management responses and developing an adaptive management strategy to test this knowledge through management experience and monitoring feedbacks. An initial evaluation of these efforts suggests the value of 'scaling-up' collaboration to facilitate integrated environmental management. There is no 'hard-wired' or structural solution to the problem on integration; instead, this experience shows that the development of collaborative partnerships also holds great promise. Such partnerships need to be carefully fitted to the particular management contexts in which integration is being pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas have long been of central interest to those concerned about the environment. Over recent decades, this interest has shifted from acquisitions and additions to the global protected area system, to concerns regarding their management and management effectiveness. This paper contributes to the growing interest among researchers and policy makers alike in developing and applying evaluation methods to report on the effectiveness of this management. We applied the recently developed World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) evaluation framework to two national parks in Australia to further contribute to our understanding both of the framework's usefulness and the effectiveness of visitor management. A specific focus on visitor management is a new addition to this framework, as is surveying both visitors and managers to provide evaluation data. The results showed that site management was effective in reducing visitor impacts. In contrast, the effectiveness of managing visitors themselves, specifically through providing information related to minimizing impacts, was less certain. The WCPA framework provides a practical basis for designing and undertaking evaluations of the effectiveness of visitor management, with such management being essential for the long-term sustainability of protected areas [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of language in influencing and often determining management, planning, and policy decisions in the environmental arena is well documented. Equally well established is the importance of language in research, both with respect to the assumptive worlds of theory, discussion, and debate, and with respect to operational definitions and methodologies. This research addresses and examines meanings and understandings of a key expression and construct largely responsible for shaping environmental management and conservation thought, practices, and policy in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area of Australia, “World Heritage values.” Research findings document the lack of a clear understanding and consensus with respect to the meanings and use of the expression across and within the stakeholder groups and communication contexts examined. This confusing, inconsistent, and often conflicting language use is a formidable and largely unacknowledged management issue and problem in terms of measurement, monitoring, and communication, and strategic and effective on-the-ground management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]