Use of science in wetland management has increased considerably over the last 50 years but there is still scope for improving the transfer of research results into management. Issues that lead to less than optimal transfer include: (1) managers not accessing existing technical information adequately, (2) researchers addressing issues of peripheral importance to management rather than key information needs, (3) managers failing to identify significant information gaps and to resource appropriate research in a timely way, (4) scale of research and certainty of results being inappropriate for application to broad-scale situations by managers responsible for outcomes, and (5) funding bodies not fully recognizing that transfer of research results to management requires a development phase. Establishment of recovery catchments in the Western Australian wheatbelt, with the aim of maintaining regional biodiversity in the face of increasing dryland salinisation, is a program that relies on transferring research results into management. However, the multidisciplinary nature of managing salinisation is a challenge for many catchment managers and formal management systems are probably an important adjunct to close knowledge of the catchment when making management decisions. An examination of management planning and actions in the Lake Warden Natural Diversity Recovery Catchment, south-west Western Australia, highlights the continuum between research and management, the importance of understanding the physical environment when managing biodiversity, and the fact that much wetland conservation relies on management action in terrestrial landscapes.

This work is part of the Western Australia Department of Environment and Conservation's Natural Diversity Recovery Catchments programme, which seeks to mitigate hydrological threats in areas of high conservation value in the southwest agricultural zone.Summary Conservation management in agricultural landscapes involves identification and prioritization of assets, and interventions to reverse or arrest decline. Planning requires synthesis of hydrological, ecological and agronomic information and intuitions. We provide a case study involving the Lake Warden Wetland System, a Ramsar-listed site on the south coast of Western Australia threatened by salinity and flooding. As the relative merits of management options (including engineering-based solutions and catchment revegetation) may be sensitive to climate change, we captured our knowledge and understanding of the effectiveness of options under different climate change scenarios using Bayesian belief networks. We insulated against overconfidence by an info-gap analysis that describes the trade-off between aspiration and immunity to uncertainty. Only engineering-based solutions offer reasonable prospects for achieving stated conservation goals in the Lake Warden Wetland System within a 25-year time horizon. Marginal gains derived from co-investment in revegetation varied among the assets. We advocate explicit treatment of uncertainty and risk-based approaches to decision-making to equip managers with a means of progressing conservation goals. The complementary insights offered by Bayesian belief networks and info-gap analysis provide a sound basis for managers to assess the extent to which candidate management actions are robust to uncertainty.