Features

Land acquisition for new reserves in parts of
western NSW has been an NPWS and NSW Government priority for the past several years. The scale of acquisitions has favoured large leasehold blocks, measuring in the tens of thousands of hectares and creating substantial new parks in the process -– the focus for this issue of Building Our Reserves returns to the west, but considers land parcels of a very different scale.

Forestry, as a land use, is generally confined to areas with more than 600 mm annual precipitation. The State Forest estate, however, includes almost 100 individual timber reserves and three hundred and fifty State forests totalling about six hundred thousand hectares scattered throughout the drier realms of western NSW. These are typically only a few hundred to a few thousand hectares in area.

Map showing State Forest lands west of the Great Divide, NSW
Map: Andrew Cox

By way of brief history, the NSW Government in the late 1970s proceeded to wholesale gazettal of Crown Land parcels throughout the Western Division as State Forests or timber reserves (excluding stock routes, municipal Commons and the like). This was apparently done for want of some sort of designation of the lands, rather than any serious plans for timber production.

Dr John Pickard from the NPWS Western Directorate made comments to NPA last year that implied that unless these smaller blocks of land are exceptional areas in terms of conservation features, NPWS would find it difficult to use their sparse resources to take over the management of tiny and remote fragments. He was contemplating seeking conservation zonings under State Forest tenure as a future alternative.

The NPWS Western Directorate covers more than half of the State and faces a difficult challenge in managing reserves and wildlife over such an extensive area. With consideration being given by NPA and other conservation groups to the need for formal protection for the ‘limbo’ lands that make up those many small timber reserves, the NPWS has expressed doubts about its capacity to take over such small areas given their current scale of operations and resources.

NPA recognizes that the western acquisition program is seeking to be more systematic than past attempts, with a priority on sampling across all landscapes, rather than merely the most rugged or the most readily available. At the same time we can’t walk away from the need to have the conservation values of these smaller blocks of public lands professionally managed. Taking into account continuing pessimistic trends for habitat reduction by land clearing, the importance of even small core protected areas must be anticipated for the long term.

We note the suggestion of Dr Pickard, that short to medium term protection may need to rely mostly on State Forest informal reserves under the existing tenure. However, the alternative conservationist viewpoint is that resources should be found so that these areas are managed by a dedicated conservation agency.

An appropriate policy, to build from this scenario, would be to officially earmark informal reserves for addition to NPWS estate if and when adjacent lands are acquired. Of course there would need to be maximum support and co-operation by the local communities and private landholders.