Under the blistering sun 250 kilometres north-west of Bourke, runs a river where – if you look close enough – you can see emu footprints in the creek bed. Just five minutes’ drive away, a dried-up creek bed snakes through the landscape while birds glide overhead. The property spans almost 437,400 hectares and is the state’s newest national park.
The area is NSW’s third-largest national park and pushes the government’s acquisition of national parks since 2019 to more than 1 million hectares. This means that national parks now cover about 10.2 per cent of the state.
A new national park, acquired by the state government, spans more than 400,000 hectares.Credit:James Brickwood
National Parks and Wildlife Service head Atticus Fleming said the new park would be bigger than many iconic parks around the world, including Yosemite National Park in the US.
He added that, while Australia had one of the worst global extinction rates, the new park would help protect about 50 threatened species, including the hopping mouse and countless birds. The area also contains ecosystems not found in any other national parks, including a complex network of rivers, salt lakes and floodplains, long parallel sand dunes and waterholes.
The park is located in the traditional country of the Karenggapa and Parundji people, and artefacts have been discovered on the property, including hearth remains, flakes and grinding plates. NPWS will work closely with traditional owners to ensure the cultural heritage is protected.
“We want people to reconnect with nature, we want them to come out as visitors and be as excited about this property as our ecologists were when they first visited,” Fleming said.
NSW Environment Minister James Griffin said the park would open to the public in 2025 and the next two years would be focused on ecosystem analysis, feral animal management, collaboration with traditional owners and building infrastructure.
“[We are] conserving not only for our generation but future generations,” he said. “What’s even more extraordinary, is that when combined with the adjacent Narrieara-Caryapundy National Park and the nearby Sturt National Park, our national parks now protect an almost completely connected area of about 1 million hectares west to the South Australia border.”
The expansion of the national park estate comes as pressure mounts on Australian governments to protect 30 per cent of the country’s land by 2030.
WWF Australia conservation scientist Dr Stuart Blanch said NSW was the second-worst jurisdiction in terms of areas protected as a proportion of the state. Tasmania and the ACT rank among the highest areas with the greatest per cent of land protected – with 42.3 per cent and 55.9 per cent respectively.
The newest national park (pictured) will be bigger than the iconic Yosemite National Park.Credit:Alex Pike
“It is not a good position to be in [for NSW] – we need to do better.” he said. “This is a really big and important acquisition, but we need another 10 of these for NSW to really become a leader in protected areas.”
He added that NSW, Western Australia and Queensland would need to play pivotal roles in increasing their protected areas in agricultural areas if the country was to achieve its 30 per cent by 2030 goals.
Blanch said this meant conservationists, farmers and traditional owners would need to get creative about how they used and shared the land.
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2023-02-27 03:02:14Z
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