Greater use of national parks is a worthy consideration

In late June, Tasmanian Greens MP and Parks Spokesperson, Cassie O'Connor announced in a brief media release that national parks are under threat. Referring to mainland states, she "highlighted the alarming attacks on the integrity of national parks by Liberal Party majority state governments" and vowed to "fight any such moves in Tasmania".

Perhaps resigned to the prospect of both the Tasmanian and Federal Labor minority governments being ousted at upcoming elections, she went on to warn that "The Liberals cannot be trusted to look after Tasmania's national parks...." and that "This concerted push by state Liberal parties to undermine the integrity of national parks will only accelerate if Tony Abbott becomes Prime Minister."

Unsurprisingly, her views reflect those of the major ENGOs who for several years have attacked the Liberals and Nationals for policies that supposedly weaken environmental controls to favour development and commercial activities.

In particular, they've targetted the Victorian Government's plan to encourage high-end commercial tourism in national parks; NSW plans to trial domestic stock grazing in some national parks; Queensland's recent decision to temporarily allow starving cattle to graze in five national parks; the lifting of bans on shore-based angling in NSW marine sanctuaries; the introduction of hunting in some NSW national parks to assist feral animal control; and a NSW proposal to consider re-introducing timber harvesting in some traditionally-used forests that recently became national parks.

Alarmist attacks against such proposals, plans and actions are to be expected from Greens politicians and ENGOs. However, such attacks are not expected to emanate from academic institutions whose scientists and researchers are presumed to think and act objectively and to rationally convey any concerns in a measured, unemotional, and apolitical manner.

It has therefore been somewhat disturbing to see some conservation scientists and academics recently voicing over-the-top condemnations of State government environmental policies. During the period from late May to mid-June,The Conversation web blog, which acts as a mouthpiece for Australia's academic community, published nine articles by conservation scientists and academics concerned about State environmental policies, mostly in relation to national parks.

The first, and arguably most prominent, of these articles was co-authored by eight academics from various Australian tertiary institutions, including two Professors and three Associate Professors and was titled 'Our national parks must be more than playgrounds or paddocks'. Its opening paragraph breathlessly warned that:

It's make or break time for Australia's national parks. National parks on land and in the ocean are dying a death of a thousand cuts in the form of bullets, hooks, hotels, logging concessions and grazing licences. It's been an extraordinary last few months, with various governments in eastern Australia proposing new uses for these critically important areas

The Conversation trades on the supposition of academic credibility through its self-promotion as an independent voice which publishes evidence-based analysis, free from the spin inherent to conventional journalism. Yet, as the above paragraph shows, this is an ideal that is being blighted by over-the-top alarmism from some of the nation's foremost scientists.

In fact, when the policies, plans and actions that they are railing against are closely examined, it becomes apparent that they don't threaten Australia's national parks in any significant way and are in fact, more likely to be beneficial.

For example, an expectation of hotels and commercial tourism developments suddenly popping-up throughout Victoria's national parks looks pretty fanciful given that the Victorian Government actually requires potential developers to undertake a five-stage approvals process, including public consultation, before they can gain a lease; and that there is a requirement for proposals to be proven to be environmentally-sensitive and capable of generating a "net benefit for the community" before Ministerial approval can be granted.

Under such rigorous requirements, perhaps one or two high-end tourism developments could be expected to go ahead in the state's national parks. However, given that they would occupy only a miniscule fraction of the state's 3.5 million hectares of parks and conservation reserves, it's hard to imagine this posing any serious environmental threat. Indeed, far from being a threat, well planned eco-developments of the type operating in Tasmania's Cradle Mountain NP are lauded as one of the few ways of generating the significant tourism dollars that can help fund park management programs that can improve biodiversity conservation.

Similarly, it is hard to see how re-introducing shore-based recreational angling along 80 km of the NSW coast can be a significant threat to recently-declared marine sanctuaries; or how trialling and potentially re-introducing stock grazing into some NSW national parks poses a significant biodiversity threat given that, until recently, the areas in question were State forests that had been grazed for 150-years.

In a similar vein, the recommendation of a NSW Parliamentary inquiry that consideration be given to re-introducing timber harvesting applies only to two regions where State forests were only recently declared as national parks after a 150-year history of selective harvesting. This is a far cry from the manufactured misconception that plans are being made to introduce logging into pristine national parks that have never seen an axe.

In Queensland, the temporary re-introduction of drought-stressed cattle into five national parks needs to be considered in the context of these areas being former pastoral properties, not pristine wilderness that has never seen a cow. Whereas in NSW, the controlled use of accredited hunters to aid feral animal control in some national parks should actually provide an environmental benefit, and differs somewhat from populist images of national parks being inundated with swarms of beer swilling, gun-totingbogans blasting everything in sight.

Despite the reality being far different to the fear-mongering rhetoric, it is still important to ask why Liberal State Governments in southern and eastern Australia would be considering greater use and more active management of national parks. Anyone looking for an answer need look no further than the previous decade or more of state Labor governments which politicised the environment to appease the ideological 'save-the-planet' demands of their urbane, inner-city supporters. This led to a flood of national park declarations that have seriously disenfranchised many rural voters.

Arguably, by appropriating 'environmental protection' as an electoral tool, State Labor governments substantially diluted the national parks concept by reserving extensive tracts of public land with few or no outstanding, unprotected natural values. Accordingly, this recent park expansion has been primarily driven by the perceived political advantages of removing disliked commercial activities, such as timber production or grazing.

Underpinning this expansive reservation of far from pristine landscapes has been an overly simplistic and largely forlorn hope that impressive natural values will magically redevelop once active human use or management is excluded. However, this is impossible where European settlement has brought irreversible changes such as the altered flood regimes that now govern the condition of new red gum national parks on either side of the Murray River; or where feral plants and animals, and unnatural fire regimes, have altered the biodiversity equilibrium.

Despite providing only limited conservation benefit, the recent park expansion has proceeded largely irrespective of broader societal consequences. The socio-economic damage done to nearby rural communities by unwarranted national park expansion has been two-fold. Not only have they lost traditional industries to the detriment of local economies, but they've had the additional slap-in-the-face of being shut-out of public lands they had formerly used for generations for a range of active recreational and practical pursuits that were suddenly excluded or highly restricted.

Further magnifying their angst is that the supposed tourism bonanza typically promised by politicians and ENGOs to justify new national parks rarely, if ever, materialises. In addition, it generally doesn't take long for the dawning of a realisation amongst nearby communities that new parks actually don't improve practical conservation outcomes. Instead, insufficient management resources typically allow weeds, ferals, and mismanaged fire to flourish as much or more than they did before.

The recent extent of national park expansion is exemplified by Victoria where 800,000 hectares of multiple use State forest that formerly supported a broad range of commercial and recreational uses was transferred into the national parks and conservation reserve system from 1998 to 2008, almost exclusively by the Bracks Labor Government.

In his subsequent autobiography, former Premier Bracks admitted that this was largely attributable to his Government's agenda to remove all timber production from Victoria's native forests. Now, more than half of Victoria's forested public lands are national parks or conservation reserves where commercial uses are excluded and recreational pursuits are either prohibited or tightly restricted.

In NSW, the change has been even more dramatic. The Carr Labor Government increased the NSW national parks estate by 62%, or two million hectares, from 1995 to 2005. This trend continued to a lesser extent under successive Labor Governments headed by Iemma, Rees and Kenneally. Just 11% of NSW public forest remains as multiple use State forest where commercial activities are permitted, along with a range of recreational pursuits that are excluded from national parks. Given this context, it is hardly surprising that a disaffected rural demographic has emerged to politically pressure the O'Farrell Liberal Government to consider greater national park use.

Critics who bemoan the role of politics in this new paradigm are being hypocritical if they didn't also rail against the political expediency that drove national park expansion under the previous State Labor regimes. Sadly at the time, almost nothing was said about the dearth of truly objective scientific input into the recent parks expansion presumably because those who could have articulated such concerns agreed with the prospect of reserving more land, despite the extent to which it arguably devalued the national parks concept.

Indeed, it seems apparent from the recent articles on The Conservation, and the comments that they attracted, that many conservation scientists and citizens alike believe that there can never be enough national parks. This is justified on the basis that Australia has lost so much of its biodiversity to agricultural and urban development over the past 200 years that all public lands should now be reserved. Underpinning this is a supposition that only national parks can protect biodiversity, and that all other lands will be "trashed".

Unfortunately, such views are in denial of the often high to very high biodiversity values present in non-park public land tenures, such as State forests, and are based on unwarranted or outdated presumptions about the extent to which land uses and recreational pursuits actually damage the environment. Such views are also bound to maintain the conflict with those who actively use and manage those non-park tenures, and will do nothing to overcome the disrespect that much of the rural demographic now harbors towards national parks and their proponents.

The critical discussion about the future role and management of Australia's national parks needs to be based on science rather than politics. Unfortunately, this won't happen until conservation academia leads the way by putting aside its own outdated biases and emotional agenda to seriously consider the prospect of balancing land use and conservation. Critical to this is a need to acknowledge that conservation and use can be complementary rather than competing paradigms, and that humans are a part of the natural world rather than a virus that needs to be largely kept out.