A proper ‘National Park” – Yellowstone National Park, USA

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One hundred and thirty nine years ago in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established in the United States of America, leading the world in national conservation..

Australia supposedly followed suit quickly afterwards in 1879, declaring The National Park just south of Sydney the second national park in the world.  It was renamed Royal National Park following Queen Elizabeth II’s visit  in 1954.

But it is one thing to be seen to be following America in environmental leadership.  It is publicly misleading to be disingenuous about ‘national‘ environmental protection.

A ‘vulnerable’ Royal National Park (New South Wales, Australia)…

National Parks in New South Wales are currently subject to the whims of incumbent State governments (both Labor and Liberal) and mining vested interests with such demands as to explore coal seam gas mining using fracking and chemical contamination from the likes of Apex Energy and Peabody Pacific’s joint Metropolitan Mine near Helensburgh in 2010.

National parks are typically large natural areas of land that are protected because they have unspoilt landscapes and a diverse number of native plants and animals. This means that commercial activities such as farming are prohibited and human activity is strictly monitored.  The purpose of the ‘national parks’ concept is to protect native flora and fauna and their habitat.

Victorian Alps

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Disturbingly, the powers that be in National Parks have grown a mindset that national parks are created primarily not for altruistic genuine conservation but for tourism – human use, benefit and exploitation.  The sell is that national parks “are also there so Australians and foreign visitors can enjoy and learn about our unique environment, heritage and culture.”

Australia has over 500 national parks covering some 28 million hectares accounting for 4% of Australia’s land mass.  But similarly disturbing is that the Australia legal concept of a ‘national park’ is one typically managed not by the national government, but a custodial responsibility delegated to the States and Territories of Australia. This means that across Australia, national parks are a hollow label for ‘reserve’, or in the case of Victoria’s Alpine National Park, an endless free cow paddock!

Cattle in the Alpine National Park?

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The state/territory custodial role for national parks is a left-over legacy from pre-Federation colonial Australia of the Nineteenth Century, in much the same way the Crown Land is a leftover legacy from when the Australian colonies were subservient to Britain.  And sure enough, the management records demonstrate that the spirit of national park protection has not been respected by the state and territory custodial governments.

National Park ‘protection’ in the United States has national clout.  But in Australia the term is politically expedient and superficial.  This has caused the conservation movement to increasingly look to UNESCO World Heritage, because state and territory governments cannoit be trusted.   ‘National park’ status has become meaningless.  Just consider the Kakadu, Kosciuszko, and the Great Barrier Reef national parks and their abuse and mismanagement legacies!

Alpine National Park

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Media Release by the National Parks Association of NSW:

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‘National Parks to be given national status’

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National Parks Association of NSW CEO, Kevin Evans, has welcomed moves by Federal environment minister Tony Burke to add Commonwealth protection to Australia’s national parks.
“Stronger Federal protection for national parks is a groundbreaking  move that will ensure the long-term integrity of Australia’s most loved natural places and vital habitat for threatened plants and animals,” Mr. Evans said.
“It will also make sure that politically motivated interference in park protection, including proposals for inappropriate tourism infrastructure, mining, cattle grazing and hunting will be more difficult in the future.
“We need to be clear that such proposals are not in the national interest,” Mr. Evans said. “Our protected areas are part of much bigger systems working at a landscape scale as the corner stone of Australia’s biodiversity conservation strategy.”
Speaking at the Sydney Institute on Thursday evening, Mr. Burke said “that there was a principle that once an area was protected there shall be no backward steps”.

He referred to the move by the Victorian government to return cattle to the Alpine National Parks earlier this year as treating a national park like a farm.

“Importantly, if implemented, this proposal would allow Australia to honour its commitment to international treaties designed to protect the world’s natural heritage” Mr. Evans said.
“It won’t change the way national parks are managed but as the minister says, it will make sure that there will be ‘no backward steps’ in that management.
“Most people already assume that national parks have national protection, as they do in most countries of the world. But almost all of our most important natural areas are actually set up and managed under the laws of each state and territory.”
Minister Burke announced last night that he has written to all states and territories seeking their views on a plan to amend federal laws to better protect national parks.
NPA encourages the NSW government to cooperate with the Federal environment minister on his proposal.
“Under the proposed federal law, states will still be in control of setting park boundaries, and there will be no change to existing activities in parks,” said Mr. Evans.
Mr. Evans said,

“What it does mean is that the protection offered by state laws will be backed up by national law.”

Our national parks will be truly part of our national heritage, securely protected by all Australians, for all Australians, for all time.

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Editor’s comments:

This revelation confirms that Australians have been hoodwinked about ‘National Park Protection’ since 1879.

It one of the biggest greenwashing cons in Australian history. National Parks are but a convenient propaganda label until alternative land use demands are proposed.

The message is that the States and Territories simply cannot be trusted with Australia’s valuable natural heritage.

So if such jurisdictions are so unrepresentative of Australian values, then why do the States and Territories continue to exist?

Sunrise on Mount Feathertop, Alpine National Park, Victoria

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Background:

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‘High country ought stay a cattle no-go zone’

by Geoff Mosley, 20110308, The Age

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‘The Baillieu government’s decision to reintroduce cattle into the Alpine National Park not only snubs 80 years of research highlighting the environmental damage they can do, it also undermines co-operative management of Australia’s alpine parks.  This move was undertaken without any consultation with the federal government and, since the Alpine National Park is on the National Heritage List, all eyes are on whether Environment Minister Tony Burke will intervene to protect the area’s nationally significant natural heritage values.

Victorian Premier, Ted Ballieu

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In  deciding,  Burke must take into account strong opposition to the Baillieu government’s move from the Australian Academy of Science and the World Commission on Protected Areas. These organisations have pointed to the bad example it would set when more than 3000 people attend the World National Parks Congress in Melbourne in 2014.

The planned ‘‘study’’ was also criticised by Melbourne University’s School of Land and Environment, whose acting head, associate professor Gerd Bossinger, said in an email: ‘‘much of the work being proposed has already been done’’. This response elicited a threat from the Baillieu government over millions of dollars in research funding.

Burke should also consider the damage that Victoria’s action would do to the co-ordinated approach to interstate management of the alpine parks, which has operated since 1986.

The states have been in charge of public land, including national parks, which by then had been established in several states, since Federation in 1901.  Federation also introduced a possible role for the federal government in encouraging co-operative endeavours in heritage protection.

Co-operation did not come easily. The first initiative for a cross-state national park in the Alps came from the environment movement.

But, in 1943, the Victorian government rejected the proposed ‘Snowy-Indi National Park‘, embracing parts of the NSW  (17,200 ha) and Victoria’s high country (22,000 ha),  because of the ‘‘dangers to which large areas of country would be exposed by prohibiting occupation’’ – whatever that meant.

Instead the individual states established separate protected areas in their territories – Kosciusko State Park in 1944 (which became Kosciusko National Park in 1967), Gudgenby Nature Reserve  in 1979 (became Namadgi National Park in 1984), and the Alpine National Park (formed from several disparate parks) in 1989.

The case for co-operative management of these adjacent alpine parks was obvious but who would initiate it?

The potential for Commonwealth leadership in such an enterprise was  greatly increased in the 1970s with the passage of legislation to protect the national estate and with Australia’s ratification in 1974 of the World Heritage Convention. Apart from Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef and south-west Tasmania, there appeared to be no part of Australia more deserving of such a federal commitment than the Alps.

A clear case in point was the need for a uniform approach to alpine grazing. NSW ended the practice in Kosciusko National Park in 1969.  The ACT followed suit.  But the Victorian government dithered. So in 1984,  I, as then director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, took 15 Victorian MPs on a tour of Kosciusko National Park. The visitors were so impressed by the recovery of the land after the removal of grazing that they agreed on a ‘‘Memorandum of Understanding for Co-operative Management of the Australian Alps National Parks’’, signed on July 15, 1986.

After an extensive review, in 2006 the Victorian government terminated the last of several of grazing licences in the Alpine National Park, bringing the state into line with NSW and the ACT. The Baillieu government’s reintroduction of grazing puts this hard-won co-operation in jeopardy.

Tony Burke’s decision also has consequences for the fate of the world heritage-listing proposal,  in limbo since prime minister Bob Hawke announced in 1989 that the Australian Alps would be assessed.

World heritage listing of the Alps and adjacent forests – the ‘‘sea to snow concept’’ – would give the federal government enhanced power to act as Hawke did in 1983 to stop the Franklin Dam in Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area. Five reports later and nothing has happened. Meanwhile, the presence of cattle in the Alpine National Park could mean that a nomination would fail the ‘‘integrity’’ test for  listing.

Burke has an opportunity to not only protect the Alpine National Park but to advance the overall cause of  national heritage protection.  If the word ‘‘national’’ means anything, he must do the right thing by the people of Australia and send the cattle back down the hill.’

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Further Reading:

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[1]   ‘Burke demands a halt to alpine cattle grazing‘, 20110318, ABC Rural, ^http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201103/s3167854.htm

[2]   ‘High country ought stay a cattle no-go zone‘,  by Geoff Mosley, 20110308, ^http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/high-country-ought-stay-a-cattle-nogo-zone-20110307-1bka1.html

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(All references accessed 20110722)

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© Photo EEG 2009

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Radiocarbon-testing has confirmed that a giant rare old-growth Eucalyptus regnans located in its natural forest habitat on East Gippsland’s Brown Mountain has been chainsawed by VicForests, despite it being scientifically confirmed to be at least 500 years old.

No regard has been made for the existence value of a Victorian 500 year old natural asset, nor the habitat requirements for the typical arboreal animals and forest owls dependent on this old growth habitat tree or its associative forest dependent habitat. Under State-

sanction, ignorant VicForest butchers have plundered, ransacked and run.

© Photo EEG 2009

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Manager, Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, Orbost, Steve DeVoogd, has been formally advised that this chainsawing of rare old growth forest is an offence committed under the section 46(1) of the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2004. The action is also a breach of Code of Forest Practices (CFP).  VicForests Chairman, Warren Hodgson, Board members Monica Gould, Jim Houghton, Fiona McNabb, Bob Smith, Susan Walpole, and Chief Executive Officer David Pollard should all be sacked forthwith. VicForests token ‘vision’ ‘purpose’ and ‘values’ which profess motherhood notions of ‘sustainable’, ‘environmentally responsible’ and ‘ethical’ are but ‘Mugabean’. This 500 year old tree epitomises the reality of Brumby’s ‘Sustainability Charter for State forests.

Botanist Steve Mueck has worked for the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment and is now a consultant in the private sector. He says radiocarbon dating of eucalypts is unusual and the result in this case is significant.

“Current forest managements practices are looking at harvesting on rotation times in the vicinity of 80 to 120 years with the perception that that’s a particularly long period of time,” he said.

“Now it is, I suppose, in the context of a human lifetime, but it is a very, very short period of time in comparison to the age in which many of the components that live in these forests can in fact get to in a natural system.”

Back in the 1860s timber workers and naturalists emerged from the forests with stories of massive trees towering to immense heights and as wide as houses.

Government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller recounted the existence of a tree as high as the Egyptian Pyramids at 480 ft (144m) and another fallen tree in the Dandenong Ranges over 400 ft (120m). A giant was sighted in the Otways with a girth of 64 ft (19m).

VicForests senseless decapitation of one of the last Victorian giants is a harbinger of extinction to Victoria’s old growth forests.

It’s like grabbing an old ANZAC from a ‘march past’ and slitting his throat.

© Photo EEG 2009

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Comments:

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‘Victorian Labor’s “sustainable” principles are thin and shallow’

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In 2006 the Labor Party pledged to “protect remaining significant stands of old growth forest currently available for timber harvesting by including them in the National Parks and reserves system”.

This promise was blatantly broken.

The trees on of Brown Mountain have not burned for 200 years despite repeated fire threats. The resistance of these old forests to bushfire is evident. This area is also the home of several highly endangered native species.

Clear felling of old growth forests has continued despite their critical role in storing carbon and providing water for the depleted Snowy River catchment.

The Victorian government states that 90% of our forests are preserved.  However, only 16% of Victoria is protected, and over 80 percent of what is logged in East Gippsland ends up as mere woodchips!

Clearing 10% of our forests is plainly too much considering that Victoria remains the most cleared and damaged State of Australia.

Our Brumby government is guilty of serious eco-destruction and policy violation, and any claims of “sustainable” principles are demonstrated to be thin and shallow.

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– end of article –

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Australia’s unsustainable reactive policy of coping with immigration is failing Australians, Australia’s environment and Australia’s cultural way of life.

The naive open flood gate policy does just that – floods thousands of new people onto an existing society, existing land use, existing resources, existing infrastructure and existing services. The federal policy has no sense of ownership of the impacts of immigration, it just issues the visas, savours its sense of international cred, but handballs the consequential problems to states, who don’t know what’s hit ’em.

Something has to crack. Sydney has cracked in many ways – housing affordability is shot, rail is rundown and over-congested, roads are at gridlock, health is technically insolvent, and every state government service is overstretched. Then we see the Cronulla riots and the drive by ethic shootings in Sydney’s outer south west. Ethnic ghettos plague Sydney and the cost of crime and of Australian gaols increasingly corrode and over-burden the community.

The problem is the skin deep immigration policy and the systemic absence of population planning. The Australian federal government or decades has been internationally irresponsible both to its existing population mix but also to new arrivals. Neither deserve its institutional neglect and the Australian government must be internationally held to account. It’s time for an holistic total lifecycle approach that looks at all the needs, costs, issues and desired outcomes of immigration on Australia’s society.

Clearly, the ghetto models in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth are recipes for civil unrest.
So perhaps a best practice approach should involve taking a look at one of Australia’s existing examples of a healthy regional community model in Australia in toto. Identify the region’s use and needs in terms of its land use, resources, infrastructure and services. Fully cost those for that region and then apportion this to the healthly population size that region supports.

Let’s suggest the Mackay Region in North Queensland. Go to the website:

http://www.mackayregion.com/

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“The region as a whole, is home to 143,000 friendly and welcoming people and the relaxed tropical city of Mackay has a population in excess of 80,000. It is no wonder the region can offer such an abundant range of services and facilities. Our vibrant developing community can proudly boast being a City where people can pursue a wide range of interests and lifestyles in a secure environment.”

OK, so let’s assume this is as good as an Australian region gets. So let’s evaluate this as a regional population standard. Then for every 143,000 immigrants into Australia, the equivalent full complement of community landscape, resources, infrastructure and services that blesses the Mackay Region is made available and constructed up front by the federal government. No compromise.

Perhaps the federal Government will then start to wake up to the true holistic cost of integrated immigration.

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Comments:

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‘State governments not innocent victims of imposed immigration’

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Tigerquoll, this is a fantastic idea.

However your words,

“(The federal Government) just issues the visas, savours its sense of international cred, but handballs the consequential problems to states, who don’t know what’s hit em”.

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… may unintentionally imply that state Governments, particularly Queensland and Victoria do not, themselves, actively clamour for immigrants in spite of the serious problems that immigration causes as you have pointed out.

Peter Beattie, Queensland Premier until 2008 and Anna Bligh his successor have been playing a game with the Queensland public of bringing about Queensland’s population growth, but avoiding the political consequences of having done so. This is partially explored in my article “Exposing Queensland Government population growth duplicity” of 1 Apr 09.

One way, Beattie achieved this was to publicly take a number of different, and mutually contradictory, stances on population growth. On some occasions he would simply say that population growth was nothing but wonderful (see, for example, Queensland Government advertisement of 8 Dec 05).

On other occasions he would act like a a kind of welcoming good-natured host for Queensland’s of interstate arrivals, although one working his hardest to stay ahead of the challenges that he had not sought himself.

On yet other occasions, he would attempt to evade political responsibility for long hospital waiting lists, under-resourced schools, traffic congestion, electricity blackouts, the water crisis by correctly (up to a point) pointing outing out that they were caused by population growth. (In reality his own astonishingly inept handling of his responsibilities seriously compounded the problems caused by population growth. Ex-Labor MP Cate Molloy has provided evidence of his complete failure to do anything about the looming water crisis until it was almost too late as just one example.)

So, in fact, state governments are not the wholly innocent victims of Rudd’s reckless program of high immigration.

Many in the third world have better served by corrupt dictators than the people of Australia are now being served by its state and federal leaders.

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