Environmental Groups rally local, national & global support for Wilderness

Tasmania’s leading environment organisations are campaigning for local, national and global support for Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area as the State Government pushes ahead with their plans to weaken protection of the globally significant area.

With Tasmanian public meetings, outreach to International allies, partner groups hosting a meeting in Melbourne and online action, the community is being rallied to urge the State Government to maintain rigorous protections.

Two public meetings on the issue of threats to the Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area will be held in Tasmania in the next fortnight. Tomorrow night in Launceston will be the first meeting, and next Tuesday 3 March in Hobart at lunch time, a second meeting will be hosted. In Melbourne on the 12 March, Friends of the Earth will host a public meeting.

In Launceston, speakers are Environmentalist Bob Brown, The Wilderness Society’s Vica Bayley, Tasmanian Greens Leader and Bass MHA Kim Booth, and Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s Adam Thompson. From 6 pm, the meeting will be held at the Pilgrim Uniting Church.

In Hobart, on Tuesday 3 March, speakers are World Heritage Expert Jamie Kirkpatrick, Environmentalist Bob Brown, Champion Orienteer & Runner Hanny Allston, and Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s Ruth Langford.

Bob Brown Foundation’s Jenny Weber states, “In moves that are incompatible with the preservation of a unique wild place, Tasmania’s government is laying bare the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to logging, mining and invasive tourism projects. More than 2000 people have made submissions at our online action to the State Government calling for them to abandon their plans to degrade the World Heritage Area. Now these public meetings provide the public another way to stand up and defend the unique Tasmanian Wilderness.”

Tasmanian Conservation Trusts Peter McGlone states, “The draft plan for managing the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is weak and needs to be drastically altered to ensure protection for the World Heritage Area. In current draft form the plan has been changed to fit the interests of the proponents for development inside the property. The Government has released details of just eight projects interested in developments in the World Heritage Area but these include private 20 huts and lodges and the draft plan places no limit on how many may be allowed.”

“Our National Parks are a legacy handed down to us by Tasmanians who had the foresight to preserve what they held to be precious. They are not the Government’s to give away or auction off to the highest bidder,” says Robert Campbell from the Tasmanian National Parks Association. “It is very concerning that at the time that the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area management plan is under review the Tasmanian Government is assessing Expressions of Interest for development of tourism experiences and associated infrastructure in the TWWHA and other National Parks and Reserves. This is pre-empting and contemptuous of the ongoing public comment and review period.”

BirdLife Tasmania will alert their international allies to the State Government’s threat to internationally critical habitats from the proposed developments and weakening of protections in the draft management plan. The proposed developments in the TWWHA pose serious risks to recently assessed international bird values according to BirdLife Tasmania Convenor, Dr Eric Woehler.

A recent national inventory of Important Bird Areas (IBAs) undertaken by BirdLife Australia, identified three IBAs that overlapped the TWWHA. “IBAs are recognised internationally as critically in need of the highest levels of protection” Dr Woehler said, and the proposed weakening of protection for these internationally significant areas poses serious risks to the birds present Dr Woehler added.

IBAs are based on international criteria, so that the assessments around the world are compatible. BirdLife Australia will be raising our concerns with the international bird conservation community to alert partners around the globe of the serious risks to these critical areas.

• VICA BAYLEY, Wilderness Society Opinion …

Many readers will understand an objective to expand tourism in Tasmania’s protected areas.

After all, tourism now underpins our economic and employment figures. That tourism is driven in large part by the uniqueness, romance, beauty and solitude of protected wild places.
The work of conservationists, Aborigines, scientists and some politicians has achieved a protected areas network that, while not complete, is the envy of the world and an engine room for our economy.

With achieving any objective, there are strategies to pursue and choices to be made.

Government has again chosen to cultivate conflict, concern and division by choosing to push the tourism industry deep into longstanding, hard-won and cherished protected reserves like the World Heritage Area (WHA).

In doing so it will weaken the conservation protections of these reserves and attack the very things Tasmania is renowned for.

Wilderness is dismissed from the proposed new WHA Management Plan and helicopters, floatplanes and jetskis are permitted, shattering a millennia-long calm. Exclusive tourism accommodation is allowed everywhere and logging and mining is reintroduced!

A conflict has already emerged that will do Tasmania no favours. It will again divide us, escalate to the national and international stage and tangle proponents in a lose-lose outcome. Think Gunns, and its collapse, irrespective of the political and process favours hand delivered by all levels of Government and the Tasmanian Parliament.

Contrast that to a choice that involves community collaboration, consensus, forward progress and brand new opportunity.

If the stated objective is to expand tourism opportunities in protected areas, the more logical, cohesive and sensible strategic choice Government and the tourism industry must make is for an expansion of the protected area estate.

Last year, the Liberal Government reversed the newly achieved protection for 400,000 ha of spectacular forests and other landscapes. These areas now sit promised to a logging industry that doesn’t want them, unallocated crown land without funding for their proper management. They languish as a lost opportunity, not only for a chance at peace in the forests, but for their surrounding communities to move on.

These are iconic places of significant natural values, many of which already have access via roads, tracks and bridges. They are scattered across the state, embedded in the very regional communities who need a new focus and a fresh, viable direction.

Imagine the kudos a Tarkine National Park and World Heritage Area would bring to Corinna, Waratah, Arthur River, Smithton, Devonport and the north west. Think of the signal we send to the world by creating the North East Highlands National Park, linking up and restoring spectacular forests like the Blue Tier, Mt Arthur and more. Picture the benefits for the East Coast and Tasman communities if a Wielangta National Park, linked to Maria Island via a marine reserve, broke up the journey on an improved tourist road between what are already ‘must-do’, but fragmented, tourism regions.

Government employs a ‘trust us, we’ll be sensible and sensitive’ approach when it comes to tourism in fragile conservation areas. But actions speak louder than words and community trust is lost.
This is the government that last year supported an attempt to delist the WHA and has reversed the protection of agreed forest reserves. It has abandoned landclearing laws and is pushing the ‘sensible and sensitive’ tourism decision to expand destructive 4WD tracks over the National Heritage Listed Aboriginal cultural landscape of the Tarkine coast. The government is now driving a ‘behind closed doors’ tourism development process with loose approval criteria, that pre-empts the new Management Plan for the WHA and treats public consultation with contempt.

If Government is again determined to choose a journey of conflict and contestation then let’s have the open debate. Public submissions to the WHA Management Plan are being accepted. Anyone who cherishes wilderness, whether for its intrinsic value, its beauty, peace and serenity, its importance for protecting outstanding natural and cultural values or its place in Tasmania’s identity and centrality to business and commercial branding, should make their views known.

The test for Government is whether it can listen to the views of those it disagrees with, including the very people who know and love wild places, and put those views above its narrow political agenda. Recent events in Victoria and Queensland highlight that belligerent governments who ignore community, common sense and collaboration and make bad strategic decisions, do so at their own peril. In that there is hope.

• Download submission writing guide …

Submission_Guide-TWWHA-small.pdf

• W. Woodpecker, in Comments: Lumber (10). There’s no point flaming your own team. I’m on the record supporting tourism in the WHA on one condition only. That ALL the revenue is used to prop-up Forestry Tasmania. Let’s not split hairs and only allocate 80% of the revenue to FT? They need every last cent generated in the WHA to help Chinese paper launder the losses FT are making. How can Chinese paper make a profit if Forestry Tasmania is also making a profit? Something has to give and with my plan we use tourists that are mostly from China to subsidise the residue supply through ARTEC and out the back door to China. The Chinese think they are getting residue at 3rd World prices but really they are paying for it themselves. Apparently backloading the chip carries is on the table. I’m probably closer to the action at Forestry Tasmania than you are Jack and I understand China will be appointing a new CEO to run Forestry Tasmania. Get used to Yum Cha Jack because you will be seeing a lot more of it?

• Nick McKim: Libs Assault on Wilderness Continues as Groom Slashes Parks Workforce

• Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan Project

• Matthew Groom: Next round of public information sessions on the TWWHA draft Plan