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Developing our national parks

Incremental creep or net benefit?

Stephen Lord
Senior Vice President

In the last issue of the Journal (April 2001) we reprinted an extract from the preface to The Recreational Opportunity Spectrum: A Framework for Planning, Management and Research, published by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. It provided a powerful description of incremental creep – an insidious process of development that can affect natural areas.
The extreme example of this process in NSW is the skiing developments within Kosciuszko National Park. Although these have not so much crept, but galloped across the last century to become virtual cities with a national park. This process will given another major boost this year since the NPWS will lose its control of planning in the ski villages, as a result of the Government agreeing to the recommendations of the Walker Inquiry (see April NPJ, p 3).

Many other national parks, however, have also been developed incrementally. A good example is Coolah Tops on the junction of the Liverpool and Warrumbungle ranges. Until the early 1980s this area had few roads. I visited the area then and, like the early visitors to Lake Kachess (described in the Recreational Opportunity Spectrum article), I liked what I saw – an isolated "lost world" plateau that required a good day's walk to reach the swamps, grassy balds, lookouts and pinnacles on the northern escarpment. Soon after, NSW State Forests intensified logging in the area and constructed major new roads across the plateau.


Grass trees, Xanthorrhoea australis, at Coolah Tops
Photo: E.A.Walpole

When the area was finally protected as a national park in 1996, it came with the legacy of this new access system. As the creation of this park was controversial in the local area, significant short-term funding was provided to create employment for displaced timber workers and provide facilities in the park. This was time-limited funding, and all works were done without a plan of management. As part of the work, the forest roads were upgraded and picnic facilities provided at lookouts and waterfalls throughout the park.

Recently major developments have occurred without a plan of management in other parks, including the SE Forests and Oxley Wild Rivers national parks.

This approach to park planning contrasts with the principle of net ecological benefit in managing natural areas expounded by Peter Hitchcock in the October 2000 issue of the Journal. This principle states that, rather than automatically increasing the development of our parks when there are demands for increased visitation – that is, by increasing the size of campgrounds, building new and better roads and so on – more lateral thinking is required to provide both optimal ecological management and quality recreational opportunities.

For example, alternatives could include working with neighbours to provide accommodation outside park boundaries, and acquiring land to site any new developments. This would provide a net benefit to both the park and its park users.

Stephen Lord
Senior Vice President



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