The CVCC has written to our local state member, Chris Gulaptis MP, and to the NSW Minister for the Environment, Gabrielle Upton MP, about our concerns.
Below is the body of our letter to the Minister for the Environment.
The Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition (CVCC) is very concerned
about the NSW Government’s restructure of the National Parks and Wildlife
Service (NPWS). On this matter our
concerns relate to the State as a whole as well as to our local area.
The CVCC notes that the
restructure currently does not affect ranger positions but we understand that
the restructure of that part of the Service will follow later in the year.
The planned changes we currently know about
are of major concern.
In relation to the Grafton
area, the CVCC is appalled at the scale of the losses and the downgrading of
the local office.
·
We understand
that at least 9 full-time jobs will be lost from the local office as well as
the loss of 3 senior field officers and one senior field supervisor.
·
Local
fire-fighting capacity will be severely affected. Seven crew leaders (including two who are in
their thirties and four who are competent divisional commanders) will be lost.
·
The number of
pest management officers in the region will be cut from 3.2 full-time
equivalents to one. That position will
be paid less than the current incumbents and does not need a degree
qualification. Bearing in mind that the North Coast is a biodiversity hotspot
with a great diversity of weeds, this bureaucratic “rationalisation” simply
does not make sense.
Changes in the local area
will obviously have serious repercussions in relation to management of the
National Parks estate in our region – a region which relies on these important
natural areas to attract tourists as well as for all the benefits they provide
to the local human population and local indigenous flora and fauna. Obviously with similar downgrading and what
is quite obviously mindless cost-cutting all over the state, the serious
repercussions are going to be felt state-wide.
When the state budget was
brought down some months ago, there was a great deal of fanfare about how good
the state economy was and what a wonderful surplus the government was
producing. Yet here we have a policy of
draconian slashing of an important environmental service – a service which aids
in protecting the natural world as well as enhancing earnings in the tourist industry.
We are very alarmed,
Minister, at your Government’s policies towards the natural environment and its
management. This latest of a series of
changes follows on from the weakening of land-clearing and biodiversity laws
which have drastically eroded protections for the natural world. As a result there is an increasing conviction
that your Government is not interested in environmental protection and is
completely indifferent to the need to stem the tide of alarming biodiversity
loss.
While our concerns in
relation to the natural world and our local economy have been highlighted in
this letter, we also have concerns about the effect of these far-reaching
changes on the NPWS officers who are being “re-structured”. There will be job losses as well as salary slashing
and what are in effect demotions.
It is indeed ironic that
these appalling changes have been announced in the fiftieth year of the National
Parks and Wildlife Service. Is it some
bean-counter’s sick idea of a joke?
The Clarence Valley Conservation
Coalition urges you, as the Minister responsible for the NPWS (in its fiftieth
year), to ensure that the Government abandons this restructure. What the NPWS needs is proper resourcing –
something it has not had for years - not this travesty of a restructure that
seems designed to ensure that Service fails.
