There are 1.15 million hectares (ha) of intertidal wetlands along the Queensland coast.
Intertidal refers to the area between the high and low tide mark. Intertidal wetlands are important ecosystems. They provide nurseries for the young of many commercial fish species and act as a protective buffer for the coastline from storm surges and cyclones.
Some intertidal wetlands are within areas of managed protection, which include:
- protected areas under the Nature Conservation Act 1992—national parks, national parks (scientific), national parks (Cape York Aboriginal land), conservation parks, resource reserves, and nature refuges
- highly protected marine park zones under the Marine Parks Act 2004—marine national parks, marine preservations, conservation parks, scientific research and buffer zones
- fish habitat areas (A and B), declared under the Fisheries Act 1994.
Most (72%) protected intertidal wetland areas are fish habitat areas.
In Queensland, areas of managed protection covering intertidal wetlands often overlap, e.g. marine park zones may overlap with fish habitat areas.
Of the 348,000ha (approximately 30%) of intertidal wetlands within managed protection (noting some wetlands may be covered by multiple types):
- 130,000ha are in protected areas (11%), with about 54% in national parks
- 27,000ha (2%) are in highly protected marine zones of Queensland marine parks, with 31% in marine national parks
- 250,000ha (22%) are in declared fish habitats.
The figures provided are rounded to the nearest 1,000ha.
Disclaimer: The State of the Environment Report 2024 (SoE2024) wetlands statistics are not comparable with previous SoE Report figures. The SoE2020 statistics are based on the most recently available wetlands and other updated data. The different versions of the wetlands mapping (e.g. 2016 – v4; 2020 – v5; 2024 – v6) and other datasets are not comparable due to many factors, such as updated source data and improved data capture methods. Therefore, differences between SoE reports do not reflect an actual wetland extent change on the ground. You can only compare statistics within each SoE Report.
