Protect our National Parks - FROM WHAT?
National Parks are currently the ONLY land areas that are protected from private land ownership, property development and commercial resource commodification and exploitation.
Private commercial functions displace and damage natural values in the process of creating profit. Development approvals and permits provide legal right to cause this damage.
It is accepted that socio-economic needs justify degrees of damage to nature from commercial activities. However less than 5% of Queensland is in National Parks and protected from this 'acceptable damage'. Is it 'balance' to open up this last 5%?
Science informs us that nature needs adequate area protected from these activities. Escalating climate change and a 6th great extinction event underway demonstrate that nature is not nearly well enough protected.
Protecting National Parks does not mean keeping people out. It simply means ensuring that ecological values are fully preserved as a core principle of any action or process that occurs within them.
Protect Our Parks - HOW?
Protect our Parks operates to promote and achieve the objectives listed below.
The second point addresses the solution necessary in Queensland to securely stop this creeping threat of privatisation.
Cease all proposals for private land tenure and privately built infrastructure within National Parks.
This is an urgent priority.
Cooloola National Park is just one of many National Parks across Australia facing this threat right now.
Click for a list of all threatened sites and links to their community info/action sites.
This drastic change toward private commercial development would be extremely damaging and irreversible.
Reinstate, and reinforce, The Cardinal Principle within the Qld. Nature Conservation Act, 1992.
The Newman Govt. amendments to the Nature Conservation Act (NCA) destroyed the 'The Cardinal Principle' of National Park management. This principle makes protection of biodiversity and ecological process the primary purpose of National Parks. It requires that all other uses be consistent with that priority.
The offending amendments allow commercial access and development as equal or even dominant purposes within our National Parks. The site selections in the Cooloola proposal clearly demonstrate the placement of the developer’s commercial requirements above the protection of fragile natural values.
First Nations' connection to country is an imperative that must not be made dependent upon private land and development deals inside our National Parks.
The Cooloola plan very distinctly makes First Nations' needs subordinate to private development contracts. The cultural and landscape values involved are far too important to be so seriously and needlessly compromised. Far better alternatives are rightfully and readily available.
Genuinely consult with communities about the purpose and use of our Parks, especially before subjecting them to ANY irreversible changes.
Decisions to allow privatisation programs within our National Parks have been made in secret and without ANY public consultation.
The public has had very limited opportunity and scope to comment on the radical development plans that are already underway. The comment process evidently intends to avoid and ignore objections, which are not considered on their merit. This is unacceptable.
Recognise that Biodiversity and Protected Areas are crucial to successfully addressing climate change.
Biodiversity plays a core function within climate quality and health. This is a tragically under-reported scientific fact. This fact, and the urgent need to act on it, is explicitly presented in globally prominent scientific reports.
Due recognition of this significant function should dispel the ideological pressure upon Parks to ‘pay for themselves in the marketplace’. This unsound and reckless pressure is driving the current privatisation threat upon Cooloola National Park.
