Sustainable use
We advocate a professional and environmentally-sustainable approach to the management of all forms of recreation. Tasmania is one on the most highly regarded bushwalking areas in Australia and there is a long history of attempts to achieve the sustainable management of walking tracks and their use by walkers.
We support appropriate track hardening and restrictions on use where environmental and social impacts are unacceptable. Politics and a lack of appropriate resourcing has frustrated an impact-based strategic approach to walking track management since at least the late 1990s.
- Draft Frenchmans Cap Recreation Zone Plan, 2018
- Frenchmans Cap planning letter & Tahune Hut DA submission, 2016
- PWS Evaluation Report – Backcountry Walking Track Management in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, 2016
- TNPA submission re draft Walls of Jerusalem Recreation Zone Plan, 2013
- Walls of Jerusalem Recreation Zone Plan, 2013
- Arthur Ranges recreational impact monitoring & management – paper
- Arthur Ranges recreational impact monitoring & management – full PWS report
- Overland Track recreational impact monitoring & management
- Draft Overland Track Recreation Zone plan, 2006
- Parks & Wildlife Service Walking Track Classification Policy, 2014
- Parks & Wildlife Service Walking Track Management Strategy for Tasmania’s Parks & Reserves, 2011-2020 This more recent track management strategy has also not yet been adequately funded or implemented.
- Submission re review of TWWHA Management Plan 2007 The limited review of the 1999 management plan aimed, in part, to weaken or prevent implementation of the Walking Track Management Strategy.
- Walking the Fine Line A mid-1990s brochure produced by the Parks & Wildife Service (PWS) noting the fragility of the western Tasmania environment and promoting the track strategy below.
- Science behind the Strategy A mid-1990s companion brochure to the above outlining the scientific basis for many of the track management strategy’s (below) recommendations.
- TWWHA Walking Track Management Strategy 1994 Vol 1 This attempt at a broad strategic approach to managing walking recreation and their environmental impacts by PWS was never fully funded or implemented, with some particular aspects (eg permits) mired in controversy.
Bushwalker above Lake Judd, Southwest National Park. Photo: Grant Dixon.
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.