Building nature's safety net 2008: progress on the Directions for the National Reserve System

"Australia's National Reserve System (NRS), the national network of public, Indigenous and private protected areas over land and freshwater, is the nation's premier investment in biodiversity conservation. Protected areas also contribute significantly to the economy through natural tourism, and provide many ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. The past decade saw significant under performance in progress towards targets that Australia committed to under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Poor progress has been associated with a lack of federal government leadership and divergent agendas of states and territories".