'Our children will never forgive us': Peak groups’ plea for LNP and Labor to come clean on plans for expanding national parks

Queensland’s peak outdoor recreation and conservation organisations say they have been met with “infuriating silence” from political parties on their push to expand the state’s national parks.

Queensland Conservation Council Protected Areas Campaigner Nicky Moffat said:

Both Labor and the LNP have not yet detailed policies and timeframes for expanding our protected areas, and time is running out. 

We have seen real progress by the Labor Government on expanding protected areas over the last three years, we know that funding is almost all spent, and we’ve heard nothing about future funding. And the LNP have been discussing private protected areas policy for two years, but we are yet to see their policy commitment.

We are losing a resource that Queenslanders treasure greatly - the natural environment. It is facing unprecedented threats, which sadly mean that more than 1000 plant and animal species are hurtling toward extinction.

Our children will never forgive us if we don’t continue growing our parks estate to support nature - so we need politicians to be brave, to speak from their hearts, and commit to ending extinctions and expanding our national parks.

Without expanded protected areas we'll have no chance of saving animals like the spectacular flying possum, the greater glider, whose home is being logged for timber and deforested for developments as we speak.

Outdoors Queensland Executive Officer Dom Courtney said studies have shown that investing $1 in Queensland’s national parks creates at least $6 in economic benefits through hospitality and tourism¹, but Queensland has the smallest proportion of protected area of any state or territory at just 8.4% of the state's area:

Protected areas promote active lifestyles, jobs in nature and provide living classrooms for outdoor educators, supporting learning about nature and First Nations cultures. They also provide amazing health and wellbeing benefits - physical health, mental health and social health.

Outdoors is where the best fun is had. The camping trips, the mountain bike rides, the hikes, climbs, paddling missions.

We can’t do any of that without healthy landscapes, and to keep them healthy we need to protect them.

We urgently need political leaders to commit to expanding protected areas, because these areas are currently small and fragmented, when they need to be large and connected to sustain wildlife and community use.

¹ Driml, S., Brown R. and Silva, C. (2020) "Estimating The Value Of National Parks To The Queensland Economy," Discussion Papers Series 636, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia

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