How are national park systems in other states faring? What challenges do they face?
The National Parks Association of Queensland caught up with the NPAs across Australia for their perspectives on the biggest issues facing their state’s national parks.
Shellie Cash is Ranger-in-Charge at Currawinya National Park in western Queensland. She has always loved being outdoors studying different animals. Growing up on a farm gave her a passion for land management and, after completing high school, Shellie took on a traineeship with QPWS in Rockhampton. It didn’t take her long to realise that she had found her perfect job.
Since moving to Queensland six years ago our family has made countless holidays and day trips to Queensland’s national parks. There are so many choices.
Our most frequent and favourite day trip though has been to a reserve, not a national park. Located on the Sunshine Coast, Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve is a short one hour and 10-minute drive from Brisbane.
The Department of Environment and Science’s Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) have commenced a collaborative project to undertake captive breeding of the critically endangered Kroombit tinker frog (Taudactylus pleione). This comes on the back of a successful captive breeding trial using the closely related Eungella tinker frog (T. liemi), by Professor Jean-Marc Hero (formerly of Griffith University), Dr Ed Meyer (consultant ecologist) and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.
The inside story on tracking down Australia’s most untrackable birdlife.
Discussion on a Bill to establish Special Wildlife Reserves (a new class of privately-owned protected area) at an Agriculture & Environment Committee hearing has cleared up some confusion around the name and produced many interesting perspectives, including AgForce’s fears over “locking up land”.
Highlighting the importance of the various land tenures in the protected area estate and the role they play in aiding endangered species, the estimated population of wild northern hairy-nosed wombats – one of the world’s rarest species – has almost doubled since the successful reintroduction program commenced at the Richard Underwood Nature Refuge in 2009. There’s more cause for celebration, with the arrival of the species’ first joey recorded in Queensland for five years!
Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles has introduced a Bill to Queensland Parliament to create a new category of protected area: Special Wildlife Reserves. NPAQ President Michelle Prior looks at the increasingly important role played by private protected areas and cautions that there is potential for public protected areas to become more focused on nature-based recreation and tourism.
Town planners and psychologists had been exploring the potential benefits of making natural spaces freely available to children to play and explore for decades. The release of the book Last Child in the Woods (Louv, 2005) articulated the disadvantages of children losing access to ‘wild areas’ once part of the fabric of towns and cities. ‘Nature deficit […]
