trigger happy cowboys with guns in national parks frequented by walkers and families. Great idea. why don't we legalise automatic weapons while we're at it? Four Corners dealt with this and pointed out how ridiculous and dangerous this proposal is. This has to be THE most bizarre entrant in the history of the public policy "we can't believe we put this forward as a credible policy" awards.

< 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 Unfortunately, this won't happen until conservation academia leads the way by putting aside its own outdated biases and emotional agenda to seriously consider the prospect of balancing land use and conservation. >

Mark, it is not so much the bias of ENGOs and conservation academia that is the problem, but rather the bias of our pro-expansionist, profit-motive-driven, big-business-beholden and balance-blind governments, of both persuasions!

While there are certainly problems with the former aforementioned mindset, there are much bigger problems with the latter.

Pro-expansionist governments have seen fit to be seen to be green by declaring large areas of wild country with very little if any human utilisation as new national parks, which has appeased the greenies while doing little of significance in terms of conservation and land management.

< 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 Unfortunately, this won't happen until conservation academia leads the way by putting aside its own outdated biases and emotional agenda to seriously consider the prospect of balancing land use and conservation. >

Yes. But it would seem that while you want it to be based on science, you are basically rejecting a lot of the science that the ‘conservation academia’ have done! I don’t think that ecological scientists and academics are being particularly biased at all (as for ENGOs, that is somewhat different, perhaps?).

continued

The main problem with condoning development in national parks is that it would happen under the management of a highly biased government.

I think that there is plenty of scope for national parks development, conducted under a rigorous scientific approval regime, and with one more big proviso – that a decent part of the profits get put back into environmental management. Not necessarily in the same park. Perhaps in other parks that are in greater need of better management. Or in other places as part of an overall environmental / sustainability strategy for the whole country.

But I couldn’t trust a Coalition government to manage this sort of development properly. And Labor is only very slightly better in this regard.

Anyway, excellent article Mark.

How about letting a few predators loose to deal with the pigs. I'm sure a few Lions & Tigers would quite happily roam the forests & when they become too much of a danger than we could make good money out of hunting safaris. On the other we could tell the ignorant do-gooders to shut up & let gun enthusiasts clean up the feral pigs.
Some condition though, no automatic rifles, no tearing up the bush with 4x4's & mandatory drug checks on the hunters. One positive reading-no gun. Bow hunters too could be encouraged to join in. It could be part of a non-military national service instead of blowing millions on useless ranger training after useless ranger training & all the idiotic bureaucracy involved in those trainings.

Good article.

What most people, who are hysterical about non-conservation uses of national parks, tend to forget is that by-and-large most national parks were not proclaimed as such for reasons such as special beauty, abundant wildlife etc. Most of the land that has ended up as national park became so because it was poor scrubby land unsuited to agriculture. In other words there is nothing special about most national parks so that if a good use does come up lets consider it on its merits.

Our local Nature Reserve (one step up in usage restrictions from a National Park eg no car access, no overnight camping without permission, no infrastructure etc) was declared in the late 1980's.
This was to protect an outlier mountain range that is a montane ecology between the coast and the high country. It had been used for lease cattle grazing and eucalyptus oil gathering (~1890- 1958).
Since proclamation of the Reserve what had been native grass flats has now been colonised by tea tree and woody weeds, next to impossible to move through. Thousands of hectares now a mono culture of tea tree. The only animals seen are feral eg goats, pigs, deer, etc.. Most the native animals have moved out onto neighbouring pasture outside the Reserve.
The hope is for the Reserve to revert to some idealistic mature multi age forest full of native fauna but it is not looking good.
I hope the NPWS management plan for the reserve does come to fruition but all I can see is an endless cycle of wildfire and feral animal infestation much to the annoyance of Reserve neighbours.

AllanL I am interested in the name of the Nature Reserve - I can add it onto my list of failed conservation reserves in Australia that I am studying and arrange for an assessment of its benign neglect.

Tragedy, I’d be interested to know just how you would define a failed reserve.

Sure there are management problems with many reserves, with insufficient fire management, weed and feral animal control. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a failure. They may still be valuable habitat for rare species or for threatened ecosystems, and they may now be safe from land-clearing or large-scale disturbance from grazing or forestry that they may have been subjected to if not declared reserves.

What exactly does your study entail?

While some National Parks rangers and their contractors may be conscientious but possibly misdirected, the adundance of exotic plants and pests indicates that many rangers and contractors may have been swinging the lead. They would want more money to do more of the same.

Any wonder they are so precious and defensive when it is suggested that other controls might complement their work, especially voluntary work outside of their control.

Locking people out of national parks is a good recipe for the degradation of those areas it would seem.

Did you hear about the helicopter shoot carried out by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service in the Warrambungles National Park? It cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars an hour to hire the helicopter, pilot and shooter, and they couldn't find any goats or pigs in the thick scrub anyway. Unfortunately, the helicopter pilot got a bit lost and they wandered over an adjoining property where a farmers herd of prize angora goats were situated, and they shot the lot of them. However, some of the shot goats were still alive when the angry farmer found them. The enraged farmer took the NP&WS to court for animal cruelty.

Meanwhile, the more clued up Barradine Forestry Commission, which managed the adjacent Pilliga State Forest, had been using teams of SSAA accredited recreational shooters to ferret out and dispatch feral goats and pigs in the forest, for many years. The shooters (I am one of them) had shot tens of thousands of goats and pigs, and had broken up the huge herds of over 200 hundred goats into much smaller groups of a half dozen or more. It did not cost the taxpayers a penny, and the Barradine Forestry Commission is still closing the forest a couple of times a year and using the services of the shooters. T

A similar thing happened at a State forest near Orange where aircraft dropped poisoned baits and they killed everything in the park except the pigs and the goats. This forest then used SSAA accredited shooters who cleaned the place out in one long weekend. It was a simple matter to close the forest by closing off the roads leading into it and putting up signs.

Shalmaneser does not know this because he is a city boy who is unaware that the sort of parks where the shootings are proposed, are usually very remote and extensive outback areas where no member of the public has any interest in bushwalking in anyway. If Shalmaneser lives in Sydney, he probably thinks that all human habitation in Australia ends at the Gladesville Bridge.

I’m with shalmaneser. We need to keep firearms our of national parks. Better that feral cats, foxes and wild dogs continue to overwhelm government funded efforts to control them. Feral cats alone are estimated to be killing over 36 million small native mammals a year in the Northern Territory. No worries! What you don't see don't matter.
http://www.marsupialsociety.org/02wi03.html
Best this carnage is left hidden, from public view. What idiot would want someone with a firearm in these remote parks that actually has the means to get rid of some ferals?