ALP Protected Area Strategy revisits 2015 election pledge on wilderness areas

Queensland's Protected Area Strategy 2020-2030 is a ten-year plan that Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch said would play a vital role in supporting the state's economic recovery by protecting and revitalising park areas and promoting a tourism-led recovery.

Queensland's protected area network currently covers more than 14.2 million hectares or 8.26pc of Queensland, more than twice the size of Tasmania. It includes 472 protected areas, 223 of which are national parks.

Since 2015, the state's protected area system has been expanded by more than 1.2m ha, but in August the Queensland Conservation Council and the Pew Charitable Trusts accused the Palaszczuk government of not delivering on the promise to protect 17 per cent of the state's wilderness areas.

In the strategy released this week the government has promised to invest $28 million in the strategic acquisition of properties across the state for dedication as protected areas.

This is in addition to the $6.5 million currently held for strategic acquisitions in Far North Queensland for which negotiations were already underway, according to Ms Enoch.

"A further $8 million will also be spent to expand the Private Protected Areas Program that supports landholders to establish Nature Refuges and Special Wildlife Reserves on their land," she said.

In 2019 the government announced that it would transfer up to 20,000 hectares of state forest in south east Queensland, where logging will cease, to protected area by 2024, and the first 6000 hectares of this transfer would occur in the current financial year, as part of the strategy.

The plan would also see a doubling of ranger numbers in the Indigenous Land and Sea Ranger Program, to 200 people.

Opposition environment spokesman David Crisafulli described the plan as shallow, saying the Labor government had failed to deliver upon it time and time again.

"It's also shallow because they've failed to even properly manage and maintain their existing properties," he said. "Queenslanders had to live with the consequences of this mismanagement when bushfires ripped through our neglected and overgrown national parks over the past couple of fire seasons."

Ms Enoch claimed the government had enhanced fire management on protected land to better protect communities, wildlife and vegetation from extreme weather events caused by climate change.

"The Palaszczuk government has invested heavily to manage feral pests in national parks," she said.

"For example, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service is investing more than $1m to reduce the impacts of feral pigs, as part of the agency's overall integrated pest management programs in 2019-20.

"In the 2018-2019 financial year, bushfire mitigation was carried out on more than 1 million hectares of land in national parks and state forests.

"And the Queensland government has allocated an additional $16 million over four years commencing in 2019-20, and $2.6 million per year ongoing, to provide improved capability for bushfire management in Queensland's parks and forests."

Ms Enoch failed to respond to a specific question on whether exclusion fencing would be considered as part of a national park good neighbour policy.

While Mr Crisafulli said the LNP had a plan to both expand the state's national parks as well as properly manage the existing land, no comprehensive strategy has been released to date.

One North Queensland resident with a nature refuge on her land, Garlone Moulin of Mt Pleasant Station, joined environmental organisations in welcoming the release of the strategy.

She said it was a hopeful start.

"More funding for nature refuge owners will go towards our work to overcome threats like feral animals, invasive weeds and fires," she said. "This supports private landholders who want to protect natural and cultural values for future generations, and that is a very good thing."

Our Living Outback spokeswoman Riley Rocco said Queensland was lagging behind other states and territories in terms of how much of the state was protected, saying the strategy should start correcting that if it got properly funded.

Sophia Walter, Queensland manager of the Pew Charitable Trusts said a $60 million down payment was a solid start for the strategy, but wanted to see investment of at least $135 million a year to restart progress on fulfilling the government's vision of a 'world class' protected area estate.