Max Rheese has a strong grip on the problems that now abound in what are called National Parks. I have the feeling that Myles Dunphy, the acknowledged father of National Parks in Australia will be spinning in his grave,
While very popular NP's receive adequate management, those that are out of sight and out of mind, suffer.
I instance Wilsons Promontory NP with its well organised bitumen roads, accommodation, shops and plentiful staff. Last time I was there, Mt Beauty was in that category.
Consider the Wonnongatta Moroka unit of the Alpine National Park. Almost identical in size to Wilson's Prom NP but with a staff of S E V E N. Seven people to perform fuel reduction burning in a mosaic pattern. To eradicate hundreds of hectares of pest plants and feral animals. To look out for visitors doing the wrong thing.
The twin problems of preference voting and proportional representation means that when the anti human being Greens say jump, both the Libs and especially Labor say, how high?
Why do the Greens so hate the bush that they will not see the value of cool burning? What have they got against Australian animals that they insist upon extremely high temperature summer fires rather than the autumn cool burns?

I have lost count of the number of times I have sailed the Qld coast, between Gladstone, & Cairns.

Along this coast are vast areas of once grazing lease, before WW11, turned national park.

I have a number of favoured anchorages, used in bad weather, or for R&R. When in one of these, I like to have a bit of a wander around. Back in the 70s, a short walk might be 10 miles, but not today.

These parks are becomming just one great lantana thicket, most of it very hard to penetrate, if you are not a feral pig. It is no longer a place you would choose for any sort of walk. The scrub turkey seem to like them, the Lantana mulch is probably good mound building material, but otherwise, even the bird life is much reduced. As an example of promotion of biodiversity, they could not get much worse.

It is a pleasure to anchor at the Port Clinton army training area, in contrast, which is well managed. I have never seen any national park presence in any of these parks, & have seen absolutely no sign of any management. Perhaps we should give the parks to the army. I suppose you have the chance of stepping on a bomb, but at least you can get through the bush.

There is not much chance of improvement either, while the park's policy is designed to buy the inner city high rise dwelling greenies vote, & not much else. Not much chance of this lot seeing these parks. No nicely constructed walkways, complete with hand rail, here.

There is a perception amongst many who enjoy the the Australian bush, that NP's are only for one group of people and those people are NP rangers.
This was reinforced to me by an NP ranger who confided that there is a push within NP's to limit access to “low impact” campers.
Low impact in NP terms are those who travel on foot and who carry every thing they need on their backs.
The unfortunate part for the parks themselves is that NP's are limiting access to the next generation, those that will be responsible in the future for something they don't understand or appreciate.
Instead of limiting access they should be embracing new visitors and teaching them the true valve of NP's.

I’m not sure about this ‘one size fits all’ notion. The fact that popular parks with lots of infrastructure and staff are treated very differently to parks in the backblocks which are there to protect representative areas of ecosystems, areas of high biodiversity and/or habitat for particular plants or animals and don’t have much visitor appeal or infrastructure to accommodate tourism, indicates that there is certainly not a ‘one size fits all’ style of administration.

It is a pity that there isn’t a much more uniform level of management… with all parks receiving the same level of attention in terms of basic environmental management that some parks or parts of parks that are in the public eye do.

A new paradigm is definitely needed whereby the very limited attention that many parks get is greatly improved.

Crikey, Australia is in boom times and has been for ages. We CAN afford to manage our environmental values a whole lot better than we have been.

If we could just get rid of the notion that constant rapid population growth and economic expansion is the answer to greater prosperity, then we might have a chance of protecting our environment more effectively.

Instead of all of us constantly paying for infrastructure and services for ever-more people, with no real gains for the existing populace, we should be spending some of this money on protecting our environment…instead of facilitating ever-more pressure being placed upon it.

And instead of the enormous profits being made from quarrying Australia going largely into accommodating ever-more people and setting them up with the Australian lifestyle, they should be directed much more so into protecting our environmental health.

There is a crazy contradiction happening here, between rapid environmental alienation largely as a result of rapid population growth and the increasing national park estate and environmental protection that is supposed to go along with it.

Let’s plan for a stable population and embrace genuine sustainability. Then we’ll both greatly reduce the pressure being placed upon our natural environment and be able to protect it in an ongoing manner much more effectively.

Lets take that one step further Ludwig.

As many of the immigrants were required to spend a couple of years on the Snowy Scheme, lets try something similar. We should be able to sort out those worth having, by their response.

How about a mandatory 2 year probation environmental service, in parks, & other public lands. All to be served in remote locations, on minimum wage, as a qualification for admission.

Any who would take that on, would have to be worth having, & should be welcomed.

I am having trouble seeing beyond a lobbyist for the Forestry Industry doing a fairly transparent job of lobbying for the Forestry Industry to take over our National Parks.

National Parks provide habitat for our wildlife. They don't need to "managed" to do this, certainly not in the way the Forestry Industry would be managing them. As the country with the highest mammal extinction rate on the planet, our wildlife needs all the help it can get.

For those of you who haven't come across Max before, as the articles bibliography notes he is a executive directory of the the Australian Environmental Foundation, a group created by the Institute of Public Affairs, which is a turn a group primarily funded by Gunns. The AEF foundation was announced during the May 2005 Annual conference in Launceston of Timber Communities Australia.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Australian_Environment_Foundation

He is also the founding member of the Rivers and Red Gum Environment Alliance, which lists among its supporting organisations "Victorian Association of Forest Industries" and the "NSW Forest Products Association".

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rivers_and_Red_Gum_Environment_Alliance

I don't mind fair dinkum criticism of how our National Parks are run, but this lobbing for the Forest Products Association under the guise of heart felt concern for our National Parks is a bit rich.