Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service on 1300 130 372

Do you want to make a significant contribution to what we know about Queensland’s 1000+ rare and threatened plants?

Boronia granitica

The National Parks Association of Queensland is establishing a Flora Survey Group (FSG).

MARCH MEETING

Wednesday 17th march 2010

"Walking the Wilderness of Tasmania"

Athol Lester

NPAQ Council Member

7.45pm

Auditorium

Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens

APRIL MEETING

Wednesday 21st April 2010

Rainforests, Climate Change and the IBISCA Project: the agony and the ecstasy ..... and the morning after!

Professor Roger Kitching

Griffiths University

7.45pm

Auditorium

Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens

Epiphytes are a common sight in the Rainforest

Early in 2008 the attention of the National Parks Association was drawn to a worrying trend regarding the future of Stock Routes (the Long Paddock) in Queensland and New South Wales. The current position then was that New South Wales had already relinquished some of their stock routes and Queensland was considering a similar action. Victoria does not have a similar stock route system but utilises a Local Government Roadside Grazing permit system. This direction in New South Wales and Queensland was considered to be a retrograde one within some sections of the conservation movement with regard to the environment.

Invited speaker:

Professor Bob Pressey

The Mismeasure of Conservation: Assessing the real contribution of our decisions to nature protection.

A comprehensive report on the talk given by Professor Pressey will be available in 2010

Conservation is the means by which society seeks to preserve natural assets and safeguard biodiversity against threats to its persistence. Conservation reserves are the cornerstones of the global conservation strategy, but reserves in Australia and around the world have a serious failing.

Their effectiveness is limited by their concentration in areas that are remote and have little value for subsistence or commercial uses. Therefore, they tend to occur where threats to biodiversity are low while losses of biodiversity continue unabated elsewhere. Importantly, this failing is hidden by common measures of conservation progress which emphasize the number and extent of reserves rather than how much loss of biodiversity their establishment has avoided.

This mismeasure of conservation stems from a concerted, pervasive focus on reserves as tools for conservation rather than avoided loss as the ultimate conservation objective. Means and ends have been confused. The presentation is mainly about the immense risks that ensue.

The presentation will begin with some examples of residual reserve systems - systems that are extensive and beautiful but nonetheless fail to live up to their promise of protecting nature. The main reasons for this situation are discussed. Attention will then move to key characteristics of conservation measures that are needed to focus our attention on avoided loss which is, after all, the real purpose of reserves.

Common measures of conservation progress used in policy and science will be assessed as to whether they can be manipulated to hide lack of progress in avoiding loss of biodiversity. All of the measures are open to manipulation and many are frequently used to obscure the lack of real conservation gains.

Finally, the presentation will look at approaches to measurement that reflect the real purpose of conservation reserves and considers the opportunities and obstacles to bringing these approaches into policy and practice.

Professor Pressey works for the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Games Cook University, Townsville.