The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

15. The evolution of landscape conservation in Australia
Box 1. Landscape conservation in urban parks: innovative financing
scheme
Large areas of public land set aside from sale have been a feature of Australian cities since the earliest
days of colonial administration. Both Sydney and Melbourne have large Domains in the centre of
their downtown areas providing open space, botanic gardens and cultural facilities like art galleries.
They are treasured places and protected through heritage legislation.
Brisbane, the fast-growing capital of Queensland, supports more plants and animal species than
any other Australian capital. There are more than 1,900 parks within the city limits. Karawatha Forest
of 840ha of bushland and coastal lowlands on the southern edge of Brisbane has over 200 species of
native wildlife. Boondall Wetlands, Brisbane’s largest wetlands on the edge of Moreton Bay between
Nudgee Beach and Shorncliffe, include more than 100ha of tidal flats, man groves, salt marshes,
melaleuca wetlands, grasslands, open forest and woodlands. Moreton Bay is a Ramsar site and the
birdlife at the wetlands is prolific; boardwalks provide access through these to hides on the bayside
from where flocks of birds on their migratory journeys to and from the northern hemisphere may be
observed.
Brisbane supports these urban parks – purchasing and developing bushland areas throughout the
city – with an innovative bushland levy of $30 per household on the annual rates paid by homeowners.
Over the last decade, the levy totalling $60 million has helped to preserve almost 1700ha.
This has included forests, a green corridor linking new residential developments, koala habitat,
scenic forested ridge tops and bayside wetlands. There are approximately 78,000ha of bushland
throughout Brisbane, representing a little more than 30% of the city area.
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
This case study describes the evolution of attitudes to landscape management through a series
of four management plans, a name change from Ayers Rock-Mt Olga to Uluru-Kata Tjuta, and
recognition of intangible Indigenous values and their protection through a joint management
strategy with Indigenous values being paramount. The national publicity following the 1994
re-inscription of Uluru-Kata Tjuta as a cultural landscape on the World Heritage List changed
the popular view of Uluru as the ‘big rock in the Centre’. The park, covering about 1,325km 2 ,
contains outstanding examples of rare desert flora and fauna as well as the major geological
features of Uluru (a sandstone monolith some 9.4km in circumference and rising 314m above
the plain) and Kata Tjuta (36 rock domes rising about 500m above the plain). It was designated
an international biosphere reserve in 1977 and listed as World Heritage for its natural heritage
values in 1987. But for the Anangu, the traditional owners of the park, there was a time when
ancestral beings in the form of humans, animals and plants travelled widely across the land
performing remarkable feats of creation and destruction. The journeys of these beings are
celebrated and the record of their activities exists today in the landscape. The Anangu have
primary responsibility for maintaining these values by caring for the land using traditional
methods.
In 1982, the first management plan promulgated for the park gave priority to biodiversity
and environmental protection. While cultural heritage was recognised, this management plan
was a ‘classical’ Australian protected area plan based on bio-centric international models. This
phase of park management protected cultural heritage as a few relatively small sites containing
artefacts (such as rock paintings) dotted within a ‘sea’ of traditional national park management
concerns.
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