Nationally Agreed Criteria for the Establishment of a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system for forests in Australia

One of the key achievements of the RFAs was the establishment of a Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative (CAR) reserve system. The system of reserves help conserve our forest environment.

The CAR reserve system is based on three principles:

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• including the full range of vegetation communities (comprehensive)
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• ensuring the level of reservation is large enough to maintain species diversity, as well as community interaction and evolution (adequate), and
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• conserving the diversity within each vegetation community, including genetic diversity (representative).

The nationally agreed criteria for a reserve system provided the means for putting a CAR reserve system into practice.

The CAR reserve system is made up of dedicated reserves, informal reserves and areas within production forests where values are protected by prescription. Dedicated, or formal, reserves are set aside for conservation, through areas such as national parks. Informal reserves are areas set aside for conservation purposes in forests that are otherwise production forests, such as special protection zones in State forests. Areas where values are protected by prescription within production forests are those that cannot be practically protected by formal or informal reservation, for example riparian vegetation or rare and dispersed values. CAR reserve systems total 10.4 million hectares of forest in RFA regions.

• Nationally Agreed Criteria for the Establishment of a Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative Reserve System for Forests in Australia PDF [335kb]
• Nationally Agreed Criteria for the Establishment of a Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative Reserve System for Forests in Australia  Word [647kb]