Locking up parklands is blinkered approach

J.K. Galbraith famously said that the conventional wisdom is always wrong.

For 50 years the conventional wisdom on national parks and conservation areas has been that we need more of them and that we need to strictly limit human activity in them.

In May, the Prime Minister announced a further 180,000 hectares of Tasmania would be set aside.  In NSW Premier Bob Carr announced that 348,000 hectares of the Pilliga State Forest would be reserved.

Plans are afoot for Queensland to reserve 1 million hectares in the western hardwoods region.

With almost one-twelfth of NSW locked up and similar or larger proportions of other states it is time to ask at what point have we created enough park.

After all, parks are not free goods and we have only been able to reserve the huge areas we have by transferring land in public ownership, particularly productive forest.

The National Parks Association would like to reserve 20 per cent of NSW.  Currently almost 8 per cent is reserved.

We would need to lock up additional areas equivalent to 15 new Kosciusko National Parks in NSW.

The Green movement in its various forms has even more ambitious plans for massive linked public reserves across Australia.

But we are not laggards internationally.

International statistics suggest that Australia's reservation of land for conservation compares very well with other countries in the highly protected categories of park.

Moreover, state legislation in recent years has reduced broadscale clearing on private land to a tiny fraction of historic levels and will phase it out entirely in the future.

However, there is evidence that we don't value our parks all that highly.  We are happy to lock them up but then tend to forget about them.

The resources we commit do not meet the challenge of managing the parks.  So we do not control the feral dogs, foxes, cats, goats, rabbits and pigs nor the bitou bush, lantana and blackberry.

And when there is a severe fire season, as there was two years ago, then the forest equivalent of 50 years of logging can be cleared by wildfire in a few weeks.

None of this is surprising when we consider that a mere 260 rangers are supervising the one-twelfth of NSW conserved.

Which leads to another question.  Do we really need to lock up our parks so completely?

Proposals to make more use of parks would no doubt be greeted with howls of outrage.

But we need to recall that much of the land thought worthy of inclusion in parks has been state forest for decades.

Much of it had also been subject to systematic Aboriginal fire regimes before European settlement, which continually modified its structure.

It should not be beyond the wit of policy makers to devise selective, sustainable forestry operations that leave the big trees untouched.

Nor should it be impossible to allow mining in the relatively tiny areas of park that this would involve.

The recent announcements by the Prime Minister and the NSW Premier already move policy some way in this direction.

It might release new mining prospects and at the same time prove a better alternative than increased imports of timber from tropical rainforests in our region.

The tourism industry has also put proposals on the table for a more active use of the parks for international tourism.

Visits to parks are a minuscule proportion of total international tourism when compared with city and resort visits.  Many of NSW's 650 parks have few visitors.

Increased public/ private partnerships in park facilities should be possible without compromising conservation.

The theme of such a new "unconventional" wisdom would be a more active but still sensitive use of conserved areas.

This is already commonplace in many countries around the world.  Perhaps we could look outward for ideas rather than persisting with conservative, inward-looking park policies.