Monday, January 19, 2015

Tasmania: trashing national parks

The Tasmanian government is on course to “trash” the state’s wilderness world heritage area if proposed tourist development goes ahead in the region, the former Greens leader Bob Brown has said.

“Tasmania’s unique status in having the only world heritage area on Earth actually labelled ‘wilderness’ should be thrown out if this selfish land-grab goes ahead,” Brown said on Sunday.

“This will trash decades of community commitment to Tasmania’s wilderness pre-eminence. The brigade backing the government ... has dollar signs in its eyes.”

The comments come as the Hodgman government is said to be pushing ahead with moves to allow tourist development in the previously off-limits world heritage wilderness.

Large swaths of the 1.58m-hectare Tasmanian wilderness world heritage area will reportedly be opened to development under a new draft management plan released last week.


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