While I would not in anyway want to
underplay the contribution of NGOs and the community which is
vital, the establishment of private reserves has had majority
funding from both Coalition and Labor governments over the past
fifteen years or so. The National Reserve Systems Program which
paid out the funds has had essentially bipartisan support for all
that time.
Without knowing exactly, over that time, I would guess that
government funding would be in the order of over $200 million. The
area purchased with this assistance was prioritized using
Australian-wide bioregionalisation and focused on bioregions which
had especially poor representation in the reserve systems. The
area would be well over 2 million hectares.
On top of that both Coalition and Labor governments supported the
Indigenous Protected Areas program which in turn supported
Indigenous landholders to declare all or part of their land as a
protected area and then funded programs of work on the areas. In
this case, the area added to the reserve system was well in excess
of 22 million hectares - at times in bioregions with little or no
previous representation in the national reserve system.
Has this been enough to bring Australia's rate of biodiversty loss
to around zero? Not in my view. There is a long, long way to go.
Strange to say, these wonderful government achievements, along
with the achievements of the many, many volunteers and private
philanthropists, seldom find themselves on the front pages of our
newspapers.
Nevertheless, where they do such excellent things, governments do
deserve credit.
regards
Con
On 6/05/2013 3:01 PM,
m("bigpond.net.au","blaags");"> wrote:
