Basin covers 14 local government areas; Barcaldine; Barcoo; Blackall-Tambo; Central Highlands; Charters Towers; Diamantina; Flinders; Longreach; Maranoa; McKinlay; Murweh; Quilpie; Richmond & Winton, with none entirely included within the Galilee Basin. The basin spans parts of nine planning regions and five natural resource management regions. The Galilee Basin overlies the mining districts of Charters Towers; Dalby; Emerald; Mount Isa; Quilpie & Winton. The Galilee Basin overlies all three Queensland Mining Regions "northern, central and southern". Pastoral grazing is by far the most frequent land use (greater than 95%) and conservation reserves occupy around 3%. Wetlands of national significance occupy 0.3% of the area of the Galilee subregion, and riverine floodplains that are also potentially water dependent occupy a further 15.5% of the area. Most of the Galilee Basin is within the Desert Channels natural resource management (NRM) region. In the 2011 census there were less than 20,000 residents in the Galilee Basin region (<12 people per 1 km2). The estimated residential population of the Galilee Basin region has decreased by −0.7% from 2001 to 2015. Rural towns and their respective populations within the Galilee Basin is provided Table 1. The indigenous heritage of the Galilee Basin is complex, with at least 12 Indigenous tribal or language groups in four separate language regions—Eyre, Gulf, Northeast and Riverine. There are native title claims covering large portions of the basin and a number of Indigenous Land Use Agreements in place. The major economic activities in the Galilee Basin are primary production (mostly rangeland grazing), government services, retail, education and tourist-related activities. The dominant occupation (32.5%) is in the agriculture, forestry and fishing category. With limited forestry restricted to the south-eastern corner and no coastal connection for fishery, this category is dominated by sheep and beef production. The second highest occupation is government services, which includes local government and health and social service care (19.8%). This is followed by five categories including retail trade; construction; education and training (schools mostly); transport, postal and warehousing; and accommodation and food services, which all provide significant employment (5 to 8%) in the Galilee Basin. Currently mining is a low-level occupation category within the subregion at 1.3% but this may increase during the constructional and/or operational phases of projected coal mining and coal seam gas extraction developments, with possible impacts on other employment categories. Ecology The Galilee Basin has a diversity of ecological communities and species as a