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Government Approved Destruction 13-Jan-2007 At 6:54:55 PM climberman

Message

On 12/01/2007 andyR wrote:

>True, but IMHO it depends if it's a National Park. Remember, the primary
>reason National Parks are established is to protect flora and fauna within
>the park. Any escalation in development is contrary to these values. Is
>the Warrumbungles - where this "government approved destruction" is taking
>place - in a designated NP? Development within NPs must surely be sensitive
>to the needs of the f & f, and in this case, it appears an obvious case
>of over development.

"But officer, I was just keeping up with the traffic !"

Is this track, seriously, compromising the ecological integrity of the Park? Not merely having an impact (everything is an impact of some sort), but actually about to reduce the conservation values of the Park ? Given it is in an NP, we have to assume that an REF has been done which covers off the threatened species, erosion, waste, visual, etc, and weighs them up against the potential or perceived public benefit. For all we know there have been subtle changes made to the original design of the track to account for these factors.

We can argue about how fuct 'The Man' is, but AFAI can see it's the climbers in this situation who have been undertaking an illegal activity, photographing that illegal activity, linking to those pics, and then having a giggle about it (me included). Let's not get carried away with self-rightousness. I don't have some desperate love for overbuilt walking tracks - oh, actually, I really love all the Blueys tracks form the earlier half of last century - but let's get some perspective.... It's a National Park. Not a Nature Reserve. So it has a primary aim, but also many secondary ones.

Beware of your impacts argument being a knife which cuts both ways.