The adoption of the revised SRS program follows a review performed by the Service’s Land Assessment Unit of past approaches to acquiring national park lands. This review found that in relation to contemporary objectives and targets for reservation, the NSW
reserve system is not yet at the halfway mark. Furthermore, the acquisition process had lacked a systematic basis and has tended to be reactive, opportunistic and ad hoc. As a result, the reserve system reflects this, with certain bioregions (such as the Sydney Basin and the Australian Alps) receiving adequate protection, whereas other bioregions remain almost totally without reserves.

For example, vegetation communities still poorly conserved include ironbark forests and woodlands of the western slopes; box woodlands; inland acacia and casuarina shrublands; chenopod shrublands of the southern plains; plant associations of the inland rivers; flood plains and discharge areas; and freshwater and estuarine wetlands.

The new SRS has several key principles which aim to address these inadequacies. Accordingly, the SRS program will:

• Apply to all NSW

• Target biodiversity and cultural heritage

• Target all ecosystems

• Target all tenures

• Seek special NSW Treasury enhancements for land acquisition

• Continue on a long-term basis.

The SRS review also makes the point that the NSW reserve system currently contains a poor representation of ecosystems occurring on fertile or flat lands. The main reason for this is that the fertile and flat lands are privately owned or leased, and considerable financial outlay is required for their acquisition.

Thus, in addition to the establishment of a systematic approach for identifying the essential lands required for addition to the reserve system, sufficient funds are also often required for their purchase. Unfortunately, a lack of funds has been the weak link in the land acquisition program throughout most of the life of the NPWS. For example, during the 1990s, the core allocation to the NPWS from Treasury was a mere $2 million per annum – a trifling amount which could purchase but a small fraction of the lands of high quality nature conservation value that were offered to the NPWS.

More recently, the acquisition budget has been augmented with the Dunphy Fund. This is an allocation of $1 million / year transferred from the capital works funds for a five-year period, and is earmarked for purchasing private lands in identified wilderness areas. The Commonwealth National Reserve System program – another recent time-limited program, funded through the privatisation of Telstra – also gave a moderate boost to the land acquisition budget for the NPWS. This program provided capital on a matching basis with funding by the State governments. In NSW, this money was used to establish several parks and reserves in Western NSW, including Culgoa and Peery Lake National Parks.

In the last State budget, it was announced that the NPWS would receive $20 million for land acquisition in the 2000-2001 financial year. This figure includes the core allocation budget, the Dunphy Fund, and funds to acquire coastal lands that the Government is committed to buying under the 8b land (proposed national park zoning) scheme – an initiative which dates back to the 1970s. Even so, it will provide a significant boost to the Service’s capacity to acquire new national park lands.

NPA welcomes both the new SRS program and the increased commitment to funding the purchase of lands for addition to the national parks system. However, to have a major beneficial effect, this level of monetary commitment needs to be continued and indeed enhanced for many years to come, to ensure that the establishment of a comprehensive and representative reserve system in NSW becomes a reality.

Stephen Lord
Senior Vice President of NPA 
and Convenor of the Reservation and Conservation sub-committee of the NPWS Advisory Council