This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub project "Improving socio-ecological understanding of natural values in Australian Marine Parks". No public data outputs will be generated by this project.

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Parks Australia (Australian Government) manage 60 Australian Marine Parks (AMPs) around the country, covering an area of 3.8 million square kilometres, or 43% of all Australian waters.

The approach to managing AMPs is set out in eight Management Plans, one for each of the five marine park networks (North, North-west, South-west, South-east and Temperate East) and one each for the Coral Sea Marine Park, Christmas Island Marine Park and Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Park. A statutory review of Management Plans for the North, North-west, South-west, Temperate-East networks and the Coral Sea Marine Park is scheduled for 2028.

This project will progress the use of socio-economic information to support the management of and contribute to the review of Australian Marine Parks. It will build on previous research funded by the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) to redevelop socio-economic benchmarks to support Parks Australia’s new sentinel park approach and network scale reporting. The project will estimate changes in public awareness, attitudes, and usage patterns since a 2019/20 benchmark - crucial for the upcoming statuatory revoew of AMP Management Plans in 2028. The work will additionally contribute to the overall management effectiveness system by integrating socio-economic and natural values data, together with improved socio-ecological understanding, complementing NESP-led data synthesis projects (SS2, D7, 1.3, 4.20 and 4.21) at both Sentinel Park and Network scales.

Approach

• A repeatable national knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) boat ramp survey will be redesigned based around a survey developed in NESP MaC Project D6. The survey will target recreational fishers and non-fishers who use AMPS around Australia, with nine survey locations to be selected in collaboration with Parks Australia.

• A national general public survey will be redesigned to explore broader community views towards the AMP network, including attitudes to AMP management zones.

• Surveys are likely to cover the Coral Sea, North, North-west, South-west, South-east and Temperate East networks.

Outputs

• Responses from recreational user surveys [dataset]. In accordance with National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, only aggregated outputs will be made publicly available. Please contact the project leader (Matt Navarro) for further information.

• Final technical report [written]