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Western Alps Link -
Connecting the Alpine National Park with Mt Baw Baw
National Park
Dr Geoff Mosley reports
The concept of a continuous alpine national park stretching from the Great Divide west of Canberra all the way to Victoria’s Baw Baw Plateau was first outlined nearly forty years ago when the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) produced its viewpoint publication on the High Country. Unfortunately, while this vision has mainly been realised, there still exists a major gap in the west with the alpine reserves of the Mt Baw Baw National Park and the Mt Skene Natural Features and Scenic Reserve being isolated from the Alpine National Park to the east.
The scheme was further developed in the 1974 Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) 1974 publication The Alps at the Crossroads written by Dick Johnson and by the ACF again in its 1983 book Victoria’s Alps An Australian Endangered Heritage by Harry Nankin. Significantly, the Australian Academy of Science joined the call in September, 1977. The Academy argued that the Alpine National Park should link with the Baw Baw National Park. It regarded contiguity of land area (especially of the main sub-alpine areas and their intervening valley systems) as being an essential part of the Alpine National Park proposal.
The time is now ripe for the grand project of a continuous alpine park to be resurrected and completed. Not only could this extended Alpine National Park incorporate Mt Skene and Baw Baw and two other scenic reserves at Mt Useful and Macalister Gorge but it could also link up with the Yarra Ranges National Park. A continuous protected area all the way from the Brindabella National Park west of the capital to the Kinglake National Park north of Melbourne is now within grasp.
The boundaries for this extension latter proposal are tentative. The idea does, however, build upon earlier proposals of the VNPA and the ACF with the aim of creating a park worthy of the area’s outstanding scenery and environment which includes the major valleys of the Barkly, Black, Jordan and Thomson Rivers .
The national park extension would also provide increased protection for the catchment of the Lake Thomson, Melbourne’s main water storage, and for the route of the Australian Alps Walking Track (AAWT) which already connects these isolated alpine areas with the Alpine National Park to the east. The land is mainly State Forest containing many Special Protection Zones (SPZs) free from logging but without the security of a national parks reservation. The elimination of logging from throughout the proposed park extension would bring many public benefits, including increased water yield.
As a first step the core of this proposed park extension including the route of the AAWT and the associated SPZs has been nominated for the National Heritage List. The area rightfully belongs in the Alpine National Park and in the meantime should be managed to that standard. Top of Page
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East Gippsland Forests National Park Scheme
The new consolidated East Gippsland Forest National Park scheme would double the size of the existing national parks in East Gippsland to about 460,000 hectares and be contiguous with the South East Forests National Park. It would pave the way for a cross border greater forests national park similar to that which is being forged in the nearby alps.
The potential of the project is immense. Nowhere else in the world is there such a display of the differences which occur with increased altitude in the eucalypt dominated sclerophyll vegetation. From the heaths and heathy woodlands right up to the snow gums and alpine herbfields there are already continuous corridors of protected areas between the national parks but these links are tenuous and vulnerable. They take the form of 184 special protection zones covering a total of 115,000 hectares in the area of the proposed new national park. These zones are better than nothing. They are not secure either from an ecological or a land use point of view. Mistakes occur over boundaries when logging occurs close by.
The South East Forests National Park forms an excellent precedent for what is proposed in East Gippsland. It was formed from five earlier national parks and state forest. Along with five other protected areas it provides a contiguous protected estate of 209, 221 hectares in the smaller region of the far south east of New South Wales. It gives the sea to snow transect a corridor from the sea additional to that which commences in the Croajingolong/Nadgee area.
The new proposal has been developed by the Alps and South East Forests Working Group but it builds on proposals for national parks stretching back in time to 1923 in the case of the Mallacoota area. More particularly it expands on concepts developed by the ACF and the Victorian National Parks Association in the 1970s and 1980s. All of the protected areas within the boundary of the proposed park have been nominated for the National Heritage List as a first step towards World Heritage nomination.
One of the great benefits of the new park is that it will improve the prospects for cooperative management of the forest parks of Australia’s south east corner. But by far and away the greatest benefit of the proposal will be what will flow to the place itself and from there to us. In a secure national park, with boundaries worthy of its international significance, the natural vegetation will be able to evolve in response to natural factors including changes in climate. It will be a park where we can both enjoy the wonders of the place that will inspire us to be more environmentally conscious. Top of Page
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To comment on these letters, email: foundation@colongwilderness.org.au
Last updated Monday 10-Mar-2008