The Royal National Park is not only oldest park in Australia and one of the oldest parks in the world, but also it is the first to receive the title, "national park" and one of the closest parks to the city, allowing the experience of untouched wilderness. It is an important breakthrough for wildlife conservation with habitat that provides shelter and food for a wide variety of animals and allows expansion into neighbouring urban suburbs. This made Sydney high in biodiversity compared to other cities in the world.
Despite its significance, the Royal National Park forests are currently under threat of developers, planning to cut down more than a thousand trees on an untouched bushland, which is an essentially home to birds, possums and sugar gliders. It will take 80 years for the trees to mature enough to support the current wildlife. Even then, plenty of the Red Bloodwood trees, which provides most of the canopy in Spring Gully, formed strange growths, 'mallee', which is very rare for this species. In addition, it is a home to many threatened species, Pigmy possum, Red-crowned Toadlet, Giant Burrowing Frog and Broad-headed Shake.
The developer's objective is to create ecotourism by installing office, tents and kitchens, while claiming that there are no threatened species. This may seem harmless on the surface but eventually 15.5 hectares of unaltered bush will likely be wiped out with the tactics of series of small development at a time. Ecotourism can be an excellent idea and aid conservation efforts when rightly done. If the developer sincerely cared about conversation, he would buy an already developed site, not wiping out the trees in a national park with threatened species.
It always make me wonder how far human greed can go in terms of harming other species. On the brighter note, Spring Gully Protection website is working on an objection proposal to stop this crime against nature and not compromise their oldest relics. I have also lodged my objection and shared with my friends so our voices will be loudly heard. It is a pity that I personally have not visited the park, so I will be doing so in the near future in case the worst case scenario comes.
Resources:
http://gumnutnaturalist.com/destruction-of-one-of-the-oldest-national-parks/
No comments:
Post a Comment