<< back to archive index Speech Regarding a Bill Date: December 12 2002 Subject: National Parks Estate (Reservations) bill 2002 From Hansard Initially the Democrats were very pleased about this bill. However, after consultation with the National Parks Association, we have some reservations about it. The National Park Estate (Reservations) Bill has several objectives. Under schedule 1 to the bill a total of 64 cells of parcels of land currently dedicated as State forests in the north-eastern forest region will be transferred to the National Parks and Wildlife Service to become national park, nature reserves or State conservation areas. Schedule 2 lists Crown land that will be incorporated into the national park and reserve system. Those include additions to the Oxley Wild Rivers, Willi Willi, Guy Fawkes, Nymboida and Washpool national parks. Schedule 5 transfers approximately 24.5 hectares of the East Boyd State Forest to the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council. Schedule 6 lists the freehold land vested in the Crown that will be reserved as national park and as State conservation areas. If and when passed, the bill will create up to 69,700 hectares of new national parks and conservation reserves. The Environmental Liaison Office sent me a fax dated 26 November outlining some of its concerns. The Environmental Liaison Office is concerned that key initiatives outlined in the Government's Action for the Environment Statement are missing from this bill. Reserve outcomes from the first western regional assessment for the Brigalow Belt South, reserves in the Goulburn subregion, and 14 icon areas under consideration by the Resource and Conservation Assessment Council [RACAC] are missing from this bill. It is a pity because obviously this would have been a good opportunity to include those areas under protection. Another of the failures of this Government relates to declaring compartments of Pine Creek Forest bordering on Bongil-Bongil National Park, 10 kilometres south of Coffs Harbour. It is an important wildlife corridor between the rainforests of the Dorrigo escarpment and the coast, providing a habitat to about 23 threatened species. Compartments of Pine Creek Forest have been logged by State Forests for the past two years now. However, the Friends of Pine Creek Forest and the Ulitarra Society consider that certain areas of the forest should be portioned off as reserve to protect the population of 800 koalas, which is considered to be the largest on the North Coast. The National Parks and Wildlife Service and State Forests have acknowledged the significance of the area and have put into place a koala management plan. Fourteen compartments have been set aside by State Forests for further assessment. However, logging practices and a move towards single-timber species plantation forestry still pose a significant threat to the koala habitat. Therefore the Democrats would seek from the Minister in reply a commitment to portion off relevant compartments in Pine Creek Forest to be included as either national park or regional reserve. The National Parks Association also expressed several concerns about the bill. On behalf of the Environment Liaison Office and the National Parks Association Andrew Cox said: "We appreciate the attempt by the Government to provide in the bill improved security for State forest in formal reserves FMZ 2 and FMZ 3A... While the bill will ensure that the zones cannot be changed without an Act of Parliament, there is little legal constraint on the activities that can occur in the special management zones. Section 21A of the Forestry Act (inserted in 1998) only restricts management of the special management zones beyond conditions determined at the discretion of the Minister for Forests... This does not adequately restrict the type of activities that can occur. The prohibition of operations is optional, and there are no conservation-based management criteria... Removing the need for an Act of Parliament to improve the level of protection would remove a major administrative barrier. Examples where this may occur include the purchase of an underlying grazing lease by NPWS or as a result of the 5 yearly review of the mineral prospectivity rating of the land as required under the NSW Forestry Agreement... The map of the proposed Special Management Zones is inadequate. It does not match the current agreed Forest Management Zones map produced by SFNSW in their Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management plan for north-eastern NSW..." There are several mapsheets from which the entire FMZ 2 and 3A areas appear to have been deleted. These match the areas where SFNSW has been seeking to re-open rainforest for logging by overriding existing Government mapping. We strongly object to this deletion. It would be a major mistake to re-open the existing rainforest mapping in this way as it would require the complete re-mapping of large areas of the north-eastern region, or even the entire region, both of which are completely impractical. The Special Management Zone map should be amended to put these missing mapsheets back in so that the Special Management Zones include all FMZ 2 and FMZ 3A from the ESFM plans which has not been otherwise transferred to National Parks and Wildlife Service estate. It should also be amended to identify and include FMZ 2 and FMZ 3A on SFNSW purchases which have since been gazetted as State Forests. Both the NSW NE Forest Agreement (Section 2.3.3) and SFNSW's own Forest Management Zoning Guidelines require that FMZ 2 and 3 A must be upgraded to FMZ 1 and gazetted as Flora Reserves wherever possible. We understand that on several occasions throughout the Government process on Forest Management Zones, North-East Forest Alliance was informed that this would take place as an outcome from this process. Four years after the agreement was signed, the Government has failed to implement this measure. We note that the bill does not include the upgrading of any FMZ 2 or 3 A areas to Flora Reserves. The bill should be amended to include the transfer of appropriate areas to FMZ 1 and their gazettal as Flora Reserves. At the very least the bill should specify that a thorough process to upgrade all FMZ2 2 and 3 A areas to the highest FMZ category possible should be conducted under the coordination of RACD for completion by June 2003... Schedule 8, Clause 7 of the bill provides for access roads to be excluded from new parks and reserves. There are a number of concerns with this provision. Subclause 5 requires the granting of a right of way to a landholder that currently holds a right of way under the Forestry Act. This provision should be discretionary as there may be circumstances where the right of way may no longer be appropriate. The definition of access is very broad. We consider that these access provisions should only apply to motorised vehicles. This is a particularly significant concern with respect to the number of wilderness areas that would be affected by this provision. Subclause 9 should be amended to allow access roads to be closed where there is no physical means of vehicle access in existence and in use at the time of the commencement of the bill... Areas for future reservation Government has released a map showing areas of State forest for future revocation pending the voluntary acquisition of the private land lease over the same area. Unfortunately, several areas of identified wilderness that are suitable for purchase by the Dunphy Wilderness Fund were omitted from this map because of objections by the Department of Mineral Resources. The validity of the DMR objections to other areas of private land already purchased by the Dunphy Wilderness Fund was the subject of a review earlier this year. This earlier review resulted in DMR modifying the extent of its objection to reservation under the National Parks and Wildlife Act and led to the reservation of eight parcels of land. No such review was undertaken for the lands remaining to be purchased within identified wilderness areas over State forest. The omission of these leasehold areas from the map creates genuine administrative problems with the Dunphy Wilderness Fund and pre-empts the wilderness acquisition and declaration. We seek your agreement that all identified wilderness within State Forest will be added to maps N2 and N4 that indicate areas of future State forest revocation pending acquisition of the underlying lease. Protocol for purchase of leasehold with FMZ 4 We note that leasehold boundaries often cut across the boundaries of 'unloggable' FMZs and loggable FMZ 4. Therefore, it is often difficult for the NPWS to purchase leases because they include large areas of FMZ 4. They cannot justify spending the money buying loggable land which SFNSW then block them from reserving. As a result, they miss out on purchasing the 'unloggable' leasehold when it is available. A recent example is the lease over the Chaelundi blockade compartments which was not purchased and thus prevented their reservation. We agree that there is no justification for spending the scarce conservation dollar buying leases that then remain partly available for State Forest to log. State Forests of NSW gain considerably when NPWS do purchase leases with some FMZ 4 because they no longer have to pay royalties and they are free of leasehold interests which are often problematic and expensive. We are proposing that a protocol or memorandum is finalised between National Parks and Wildlife Service and SFNSW to ensure that unique opportunities to purchase leaseholds identified for reservation are not lost. This would involve SFNSW contributing funds to buy the lease. The cost of the lease would be divided between the National Parks and Wildlife Service and SFNSW according to the proportional area of 'unloggable' FMZ to loggable areas. We propose that RACD are also signatory to the agreement to resolve any disputes that may arise. Occupational Permits We note the Ministers' references to occupational permits in the Second Reading Speech. The NSW Forest Agreements for upper and lower north-east NSW required SFNSW to phase out Occupational Permits in clumped FMZ areas by 1st July 2000. This encompasses all the areas identified for reservation by this bill. SFNSW have not implemented the OP phase-out required by the Forest Agreement. Instead, permit holders in FMZ 2 & FMZ 3A have had three years notice of the situation as well as having an Occupational Permit Taskforce to oversee the process. Therefore, to ensure the long overdue phase-out of OPs does actually occur, the bill should require the phase-out of Occupational Permits and Permissive Occupancies from areas identified for reservation and clumped FMZ areas identified by the Forest Agreement, by the end 2003. Another aspect that needs to be addressed is management of the forests. I have received a number of letters from constituents who have held leases for a long time and who will be economically disadvantaged by the loss of those leases. One could argue that those leases have always been discretionary: The fact that they no longer exist puts the Government in the position of a landlord reclaiming his house. Leaseholders have not been in a position to assume that possession would be forever. Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile: It is the leaseholder's house, in this case. The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS: The house may be part of the lease over the land. Some properties that are contiguous with leasehold land may become economically non-viable. The Government should think about that. I am not sure that the bill addresses that point to the extent that it should. The point made by Hon. Malcolm Jones and others was that the National Parks and Wildlife Service has not been allocating sufficient funds to the management of the national park estate, particularly bushfire management, and that has caused great problems. The Government must not just declare land as additional national park estate, particularly just before an election, but should manage it, and that means allocating sufficient financial resources. Poorly managed land will lead to the spread of bushfires or indeed to the destruction of forests that have been preserved as icons of conservation values. That is quite unsatisfactory. The national park estate must be properly managed, and that may involve allocations of additional funds. Ecotourism could be a systematic statewide method of raising funds to manage the national park estate properly. Although I praise the Government for increasing the size of the area preserved in this State as national park land, I point out that the Government has obligations beyond merely increasing the area of the national park estate."

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