As of March 2014, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA: http://www.ala.org.au) has nearly 45 million records of 112 thousand species, 400+ ‘environmental layers’, ~39 million pages of biological literature, 40 thousand species images and a host of other integrated biological data. What the Atlas lacks however is the identification of freshwater species and national spatial layers that describe their environment. The Atlas has an unknown but large number of observations of freshwater species that can currently only be related to adjacent terrestrial or marine environmental parameters. There is therefore a stark contrast between the services provided by the Atlas to the freshwater community by comparison with those working in terrestrial and marine environments.

The Australian National Aquatic Ecosystem (ANAE) Classification Framework aligns nicely with IBRA and IMCRA classifications, but seamless national geospatial layers based on the ANAE are not available. Without those layers, how can freshwater ecosystems be sustained? Successful local and regional trials have been completed and the issue has been raised in public reports but no nationally agreed practical outcomes have emerged. There is no ‘champion’ to maintain a list of species with at least a freshwater phase. How can we attain solutions? Who is best placed to take leadership, provide the resources and catalyse an outcome? The Atlas recognised the gap in data and services, but it does have the infrastructure to support a practical outcome when it occurs (see for example http://lists.ala.org.au and http://spatial.ala.org.au/layers).