The Conversation: Making national parks truly national

Australia boasts over 500 national parks covering 28 million hectares of land, or about 3.6% of Australia. You could be forgiven for thinking we’re doing well in the biodiversity-conservation game.

But did you know that of those more than 500 national parks, only six are managed by the Commonwealth Government?

Kakadu National Park – our biggest and possibly most important national park – is a global conservation embarrassment. Image by Cgoodwin [CC-BY-3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Kakadu National Park – our biggest and possibly most important national park – is a global conservation embarrassment. Image by Cgoodwin [CC-BY-3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke has proposed extending the Commonwealth’s power to veto potentially high-impact activities like logging, grazing and mining proposed in national parks.

As ecologists and conservation scientists, we couldn’t agree more with the intent of this proposal, although we have several recommendations and caveats.

Read more at The Conversation.