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](https://euanritchie.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/kakadu_brumbies_wikimediacommons.png?w=625&h=386)
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
As ecologists and conservation scientists, we couldn’t agree more with the intent of this proposal, although we have several recommendations and caveats.