Cell Descriptions - South East Natural Resources Management Board

SE1 – Piccaninnie Ponds
Fauna management from parks plan:
(From Slater & Farrington, 2010, draft).
“Piccaninnie Ponds and surrounding wetlands are managed for conservation by DENR. Pick
Swamp represents a recent acquisition to the Crown and will soon be gazetted as a Conservation
Park. This wetland is bordered by the Southern Ocean to the south and Piccaninnie Ponds
Conservation Park to the east. Private grazing properties lie to the north and west. The hydrology
of Pick Swamp has been restored through the construction of a levee bank and outflow
regulation. This complex of sites form regionally significant habitat for waterbirds and fish owing
to the extent of permanent water.”
Pick Swamp (land parcel A50 DP83130) has now been incorporated into Piccaninnie Ponds CP.
However the total wetland system extends from Green Point in Browns Bay to the Glenelg River
in Victoria. Opportunity exists to incorporate further land into the CP to protect the entire
wetland complex, which is habitat for nationally and State threatened biota, critically dependent
upon the hydrology of this area.
Conservation Analysis (GIS)
The sum of means for all conservation layers is 138.47, making this second highest value cell in
the region. When the detailed conservation summary map is examined it shows that these values
are strongly concentrated in Piccaninnie Ponds CP, Pick Swamp and Browns Beach dunes: other
than the poorly drained land between Pick Swamp and the CP, other parts of the cell show low
total values.
Coastal wetlands (Typha sedgelands and Gahnia sedgelands) in the CP and at Pick Swamp show
high values for rare plant associations, threatened bird species; numbers of bird species is high to
very high for the whole cell: west of Green Point most of the cell show at least moderate values
for bird habitat.
Based on the floristic vegetation map of SA and the CDC survey, very high scores for the
proportion of plants endemic to the region were found in the dune areas of eastern Brown Bay
and PP CP; Vegetation communities threatened status, rarity within the state, and endemicity all
rated highly. Total numbers of plant and animal species are low for the cell, with the exception of
the PP CP, where species numbers are high within the sand dune areas. Throughout this cell
butterfly species numbers and butterfly habitat values are high, notably in the CP and the dune
ridges of eastern Brown Bay. Piccaninnie Ponds and Pick Swamp showed high scores for reptile
habitat. These areas were also valuable as habitat for the Southern Bell Frog (focal species).
Limestone Coast and Coorong Coastal Action Plan 198