Two years after the Queensland Premier commitment to expand national parks by 50% and double all protected areas by 2020, the Government is still a long way off target.
Some significant progress has been made:
- expansion of D’Aguilar National Park at The Gap by 34,000 hectares, making Brisbane host to Australia’s largest national park near a state capital CBD
- declaration of 13,710 hectares on the Warrego river floodplain south of Cunnamulla as Binya National Park, the first protected area in that subregion, filling a major gap in Queensland’s representative reserve system.
However, significant areas of the expanded parks are in fact state forest transfers and acquisition of lands not currently in Crown ownership have been minimal. The Premier’s Toward Q2 annual progress report 2008-2009 provides a projection that the Government is on track to reaching its national parks commitment. Based on the Government’s performance over the last 10 years, Wildlife Queensland is of the opinion they will fall well short of achieving 7.5%. Perhaps it is the Government’s strategy to focus on forestry transfers and ramp up acquisitions in the final years? Should this be the case, Wildlife Queensland would welcome such advice.
Wildlife Queensland appreciates that the current financial climate makes budgetary commitments to parks and park management challenging. We congratulate Minister Kate Jones in achieving management funds as an item in the consolidated budget - past ministers and staff have been striving to achieve this outcome since the 1980’s. This is a significant step in the right direction - however substantial investment will be required to lift the standard of management to a desirable level. Wildlife Queensland advocates an annual 10% budget increment for monitoring and management of national parks.
While Wildlife Queensland supports a Government that is committed to the expansion of national parks and protected area estate, the devil is in the detail. If the Government does indeed achieve their current commitment to expand national park protection by 50% this would result in an increase of national park estate to 7.5 % of the state (approximately 12.9 million hectares) by 2020.
While a step in the right direction, it falls far short of what is truly needed in Queensland, considering that the international standard is 15%. In addition, hectares alone are no measure of the effectiveness of such a program. There is need to set targets to capture a percentage of biodiversity in the protected area estate and, as is the practice, regional ecosystems may be used as surrogates for biodiversity.
Queensland protected area estate must capture at least 80% of the state’s regional ecosystems by 2020. The regional ecosystems captured must be comprehensive, adequate and representative. Furthermore resilience and connectivity must be encompassed in the protected area estate. The Government must commit to the establishment of a $100 Million Protected Areas Future Fund to fund the purchase of areas of high conservation value, to establish covenants and other devices to provide perpetual protection on private land and create vital corridors to form connectivity between landscapes.
The Liberal National Party has been approached for their policy with regard to National Parks. At this stage it has been suggested that the policy released prior to the last election still stands but that needs to be confirmed. Wildlife Queensland is awaiting advice but that policy is certainly less than desirable.
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