Polygons defining Ramsar wetland areas in Victoria. The Ramsar Convention of Wetlands of International Importance, to which Australia is a signatory, requires contracting parties to designate wetlands of international significance within their territory for listing under the convention. This layer is based on RAMSAR100 but has been realigned and updated to improve its accuracy. It has been updated to match current VICMAP parcel, road, hydro and water area data as well as using high-resolution digital aerial photography to improve its precision to 1:25 000.

National dataset of Australia's Ramsar Wetlands. The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (the Ramsar Convention) was signed in Ramsar, Iran on 2 February 1971. The Ramsar Convention aims to halt the worldwide loss of wetlands and to conserve, through wise use and management, those that remain. The Convention encourages member countries to nominate sites containing representative, rare or unique wetlands, or that are important for conserving biological diversity, to the List of Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar sites). Australia was one of the first countries to become a Contracting Party to the Convention and designated the world's first Ramsar site, Cobourg Peninsula, in 1974. This project was initiated by the Wetlands Section of the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Spatial data was sourced from the relevant State and Territory agencies and compiled into a single national coverage.