Natural Resource Management (NRM) Regions (2016)

The Natural Resource Management (NRM) Regions dataset is maintained for the purpose of authoritative reporting on the Australian Government's NRM investments. The dataset is designed to cover all Australian territory where Australian Government funded NRM projects might take place and includes major islands, external territories, and state and coastal waters in addition to the NRM regional boundaries.

The 2016 version 2 updates the marine portion of the NRM regions to be consistent with the current (2015) Australian Maritime Boundaries Information System (AMBIS) coastal water limit boundary. It also includes a new unique ID field for sorting purposes (this is explained in detail below). Three NRM names have also been updated as a result of new information from relevant state/territory agencies and/or NRM regional bodies, as follows:

1. “Avon” changed to “Wheatbelt”
2. “North West” changed to “Cradle Coast”

The 2016 version 2 maintains definitions established in the 2015 version, including for the Peel-Harvey NRM region and for the OceanWatch Australia Limited NRM organisation (not spatially defined). It also maintains changes made in earlier versions including: the 2014 changes in NSW from Catchment Management Authorities (CMA) to Local Land Service areas; and the 2012 update/formalisation of the 2010 dataset (which was an interim update of the NRM Regions 2009 dataset, released Feb 2009). The original base layer version of this dataset was released in 2006 as the Natural Heritage Trust II (NHT2) Region Boundaries dataset.

Whilst the boundaries of NRM Regions are defined by legislation in some states and territories this dataset should not be used to represent legal boundaries in any way. It is an administrative dataset developed for the purpose of reporting and public information. It should be noted that from time to time the states and/or territories may revise their regional boundaries in accordance with local needs and therefore alterations to either the attribution or boundaries of the data may occur in the future.

In total, this dataset now represents 61 NRM regions, two of which have large and remote islands which are distinguished in the spatial data, resulting in 63 map objects. The 61 NRM regions comprise 56 mainland regions administered by 55 NRM regional bodies (the Cooperative Management Area in QLD is jointly administered by the two adjacent regional bodies: the Cape York and Northern Gulf NRM bodies) and seven islands (five administered by the Australian Government as external territories, and two administered by nearby mainland NRM regional bodies, which are shown as separate map objects).

The 2016 version 2 includes a new unique ID field in the table structure to allow for sorting based on state, region name and region object (where there is more than one part). The following list of regions includes the new NRM_ID field as a reference:

New South Wales 1010 Central Tablelands 1020 Central West 1030 Greater Sydney 1040 Hunter 1050 Murray 1060 North Coast (excluding Lord Howe Island) 1061 North Coast - Lord Howe Island 1070 North West NSW 1080 Northern Tablelands 1090 Riverina 1100 South East NSW 1110 Western

Victoria
2010 Corangamite 2020 East Gippsland 2030 Glenelg Hopkins 2040 Goulburn Broken 2050 Mallee 2060 North Central 2070 North East 2080 Port Phillip and Western Port 2090 West Gippsland 2100 Wimmera

Queensland
3010 Burnett Mary 3020 Cape York 3030 Condamine 3040 Cooperative Management Area (administered jointly by Cape York and Northern Gulf) 3050 Desert Channels 3060 Fitzroy 3070 Burdekin 3080 Northern Gulf 3090 Border Rivers Maranoa-Balonne 3100 Mackay Whitsunday 3110 South East Queensland 3120 South West Queensland 3130 Southern Gulf 3140 Wet Tropics 3150 Torres Strait

South Australia 4010 Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges 4020 Alinytjara Wilurara 4030 Eyre Peninsula 4040 Kangaroo Island 4050 Northern and Yorke 4060 South Australian Arid Lands 4070 South Australian Murray Darling Basin 4080 South East

Western Australia
5010 Northern Agricultural 5020 Peel-Harvey 5030 Perth 5040 Rangelands 5050 South Coast 5060 South West 5070 Wheatbelt

Tasmania
6010 Cradle Coast 6020 North 6030 South (excluding Macquarie Islands) 6031 South - Macquarie Islands

Northern Territory
7010 Northern Territory

Australian Capital Territory
8010 ACT

External Territories
9010 Ashmore and Cartier Islands 9020 Christmas Island 9030 Cocos Keeling Islands 9040 Heard and McDonald Islands 9050 Norfolk IslandData to be available in the Public Domain under Creative Commons by Attribution Licensing Agreement. More information can be found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en CC - Attribution (CC BY) © Commonwealth of Australia (Department of the Environment) 2015