Blue Mountains Conservation Society - Protecting National Parks

Blue Mountains Conservation Society

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Protecting National Parks
Your National Parks Cartoon

The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Region consists of seven National Parks as well as the Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve.

The towns of the Blue Mountains are primarily surrounded by the Blue Mountains National Park.

The Society actively works to increase the environmentally sensitive land under reservation through appropriate park additions.
This includes -

the acquisition of inholdings - see attached report
implementation of Public Lands Rationalisation Process Stage 1 - see details below
the Gardens of Stone Stage 2 Proposal - see the BMCS webpage.

We are concerned about the funding and management of National Parks, Wilderness Areas and reserves. We argue for increased funding of conservation works such as weed management.

The Society supports evidenced based programs for feral animal control and is opposed to recreational hunting in National Parks. See this SMH article. [if the link doesn't work, here's the article as a 104KB PDF.]

We are also opposed to new legislation passed by the NSW Parliament that brings new tourism developments to Blue Mountains national parks. Find out more.

Our Blue Mountains Gazette advertisement - 7th July, 2010.

Blue Mountains Public Lands Rationalisation Project - Stage 1

There are large areas of public lands in the Blue Mountains managed by a number of government agencies. Many Council or Crown reserves of high conservation value adjoin the Blue Mountains National Park.

In the late 1990s, the State Government initiated a process to “identify high conservation public lands that would be more appropriately managed as a dedicated conservation reserve, either as part of Blue Mountains National Park, a Regional Park, a State Park or Community Land” (p.1. The Blue Mountains Public Lands Rationalisation Process Stage 1, Public Exhibition Report, 2002.)

The Stage 1 process was completed in December 2002 and approximately 4,000ha of high conservation lands were proposed for transfer to Blue Mountains National Park. Examples include -
   ♦ Hat Hill Creek Reserve in Blackheath,
   ♦ Minniehaha Falls Reserve in Katoomba,
   ♦ Govetts Creek Natural Area in Leura,
   ♦ North Lawson Park, and
   ♦ Sassafras Gully Reserve in Springwood.

Unfortunately, the lands transfer has never occurred despite the long process of community consultation and joint work between the state and local government. The main reason for this seems to be a lack of funding for the Parks Service to managed the lands if acquired. The Society continues to ask for Stage 1 to be implemented and fully funded.