The biodiversity outlook for New South Wales is dire with a recent government report predicting extinction of half the state’s threatened species over the next century. National parks are vital to biodiversity conservation, providing habitat to native animals. All national parks have a plan of management that sets out how each is to be managed over five to 10 years. Plans should cover how conservation values can be enhanced and protected from risk but in the last 10 years they have been more about what development can occur in parks.

I worked with the National Parks Association to get the Minister for the Environment to establish a review process to improve national park plans of management. During debate on national parks legislation, I also called for urgent reservation of the Murrah Flora Reserves, which support the last significant koala population on the state’s south coast.

My speech on the bill > HERE.