A radical new plan to sell off some of Australia’s smaller national parks has been floated by a leading ecologist.
Professor Hugh Possingham from the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions says a current lack of funds means only a tenth of what is needed is spent on protecting species and ecosystems.
He believes selling off smaller national parks would enable efforts to be concentrated on conserving the country’s most important landscapes. “The evidence indicates that Australian native species are still disappearing at a rate of 100 to 1000 times faster than normal,” he said in a statement. “We should look at putting resources into those national parks and species where we have thebest chance of achieving something … that may mean selling off smaller parks that are not viable.”
He said he did not believe sold-off parks would inevitably lose their conservation value.
“You could liken it to triage in a World War II military hospital: tough decisions may need to be taken about which patients have the best chance of survival and the resources allocated accordingly,” Prof Possingham said. “Otherwise you spread your effort too thinly and achieve too little … this is not a popular point of view, but it is grounded in reality.”
He said that, in the past, Australian conservation tended to be driven by a wish to restore parts of the continent to a pre-European state – but this had proved impractical.
There are currently about 2000 national parks in Australia spread across 12% of the country. During the past 200 years, 22 mammal species have become extinct. Some 100 are on the threatened and endangered species list, and 14 species of frogs are on their last legs.
The question Professor Possingham is really asking is: “How much of Australia can we afford to save?”
