‘Visitors vote and other species don’t,’ says researcher, who found park managers are being pressured to prioritise infrastructure
Managers of cash-strapped national parks have put spending on visitor facilities ahead of managing the environment, aResearchers from James Cook University spent years interviewing managers from 41 protected areas around the state and say all are suffering the effects of inadequate, shrinking budgets.
Pressey says park managers told of being asked to skew resources to support good visitor experiences. “When budgets are constrained, as is almost always the case, the implications of prioritising visitor-related activities over biodiversity-related work are clear: biodiversity will be inadequately protected and managed and, in the long term, more likely to decline,” Pressey says.
It was conducted over five years, from 2011, but was twice halted when the Newman government was in power, something Pressey blames on political concerns.He says experienced managers say the problems that existed then remain today but he doubts there’ll be money on the table for similar studies in the future.
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