Every block of land's different. My experience it takes a fair chunk of a lifetime to start to get a "feel" for a spot.
Technical knowledge makes a good tool kit but it's only supplementary to knowing a place.
Fourth generation on our place and was a bit critical of some of the past management when I took it on.
Today I'd say time's a humbling tutor.

A bit of interesting lateral thinking there individual and canals can also move bulk freight for less cost per kilometre than anything else. Anything built on flood plains ought to be on stilts.

Moreover, some of our tidal estuaries could be used in similar fashion as is common in many Asian or Island nations.

Canals could even become highways for such inhabitants and would exclude the necessity to build access roads. Canal constructions via cutter dredges, also contribute spoil to the levee construction.

Around Brisbane, years of below-average rainfall and concrete and bitumen have between them dried out the subsoil which invariably crack along with those buildings atop them!

So, keeping your subsoil damp by the above suggestion of storing vastly more in the landscape and having it do double or triple duty would alleviate some of the structural damage caused by deep cracking in ultradry subsoil!

One wonders if this could also be true in Sydney or Melbourne in recently highlighted cracking in newish highrise development?
Alan B.

Canals ? Why do you think the canals closed down as soon as the
railways were built in the UK ?

canals closed down as soon as the railways were built in the UK ?
Bazz,
And, look where the UK is now ? Even the Europeans have connected all the major rivers now, from northern Germany to the Black Sea & France inbetween. Stop looking at the UK for reference, they're history !

The traffic on the Rhine and Danube is nothing like the rail and road traffic.
The rivers mainly carry bulk cargoes eg like sand for cement.
I don't remember seeing one container on a barge.
Just had a look at my photos and the barges were bulk carriers except
one that had two semi trucks & trailers on board.
We saw many up close when in locks.

Back to management of national parks.
I've suggested before perhaps the melding of parks management and wildlife may be a problem. As it is the dual purposes seem to have become one for the purposes of the other. Parks maintained for wildlife. That could be narrowing the focus.

The increase of land area managed by P&W is probably a big factor.
Here in Tas areas formerly managed by forestry are now managed by P&W.
The philosophy and focus is very different. It's pretty much just left alone now. Unfair to say it's all neglect. Physical capacity and funding would have to be an issue.

We're expecting big fires at some time. When, not if.
Not that it really matters if the parks and state forests burn. The damage to property beyond them does.

Perhaps cleared boundary buffers could be created around these spaces. Maybe 100m wide with formed roads each side where possible so the buffers can be slashed or burned relatively easily. At least that'd create a ready made line to back burn from in the event of an internal fire starting.

More important than parks and state forest is private property. We had the heady days of preserving forest and native vegetation in place for carbon accounting and the idea of biodiversity preservation. But the result apart from the cost to the landowners affected losing the potential of their land, is what's so plain and that's that it'll end up burning anyway. Death and destruction will be the continuing outcome. Which in reality is the exact opposite of what the land clearing bans and burning off constraints were intended to produce.