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Abstract |
Marine spatial planning (MSP) has been emerging as an approach to plan and maintain a balance between different human uses and conservation goals. Large, remote areas present a number of challenges for conservation managers. The Kimberley region in northern Western Australia extends ten degrees of longitude, eight degrees of latitude, and in our study spanned over 13,300 km of complex coastline. The region is remote, with a low population, and a history of economic development including agriculture, mining, fishing, and more recently oil and gas exploration. It is also renown for its rich Aboriginal culture and heritage, biodiversity and wilderness (Wilson, 2014, Wilson, 2013). Most conservation planning, including MSP, suffers from the lack of social data (St Martin and Hall-Arber, 2014), hence the aim of this study was to evaluate, through the well established method of public participation GIS (e.g. Brown and Pullar, 2012), areas of conflict potential using human values associated with the marine and coastal region of Kimberley. |
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