Threats to Tasmania’s natural areas have included hydro-electric development in the 1960-80s and industrial forestry from the 1980s onward. Conservation campaigns have led to the protection of many of these formerly-threatened areas.
Tasmania’s first national parks date from 1916 and national parks and other reserves now cover almost 50% of Tasmania. By world standards they are unusually free of tourism developments and the more remote parts of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area have a high degree of wilder character.
But Tasmania’s existing national parks are increasingly under threat. These celebrated places are at risk of exploitation from inappropriate development, insufficient management of visitor impact and inadequate funding to ensure control or eradication of threatening processes. One of our major current concerns is the threat to the integrity of national parks from inappropriate tourism developments.

Dove Lake and Cradle Mountain, an iconic scene in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Photo: Grant Dixon
Our Campaigns
The Tasmanian National Parks Association offers an independent voice for Tasmania’s national parks and reserves, to ensure they are managed for the conservation of the values for which they were proclaimed.