Victorians deserve to have parks your grandchildren will be proud of.
Right now, less than 0.5% of state government spending is used to protect your National Parks system.
And that’s simply not good enough. Your parks and reserves need and deserve at least 1% to maintain and protect them.
National Parks and conservation reserves across Victoria face many threats right now. Inadequate funding for feral animal and weed control, inappropriate commercial development in National Parks, too few Rangers, public beaches taken over by private interests…
Will you donate today to help fight to have 1% of the Victorian government budget used to protect our parks?
Demand 1% for Parks – Donate today
1% is not a lot. To give you a comparison, state health expenditure is about 28%, and spending on education about 24%.
And 1% is not much at all when you look at what you get by having healthy parks:
- Clean water. Over a million hectares of water supply catchments are located within Victoria’s National Parks.
- Precious animals and plants are protected. Victoria’s parks network is home to 91.9% of Victoria’s native plant species and 78.4% of its animal species.
- Crops are pollinated. Pollination services provided by Victoria’s parks have been valued at more than $123 million.
- Parks help fight climate change. The Victorian parks network is a major carbon sink, with at least 270 million tonnes of carbon stored in land-based parks and 850,000 tonnes in marine parks.
- Parks protect our coasts. Around 70% of the Victorian coast is managed as part of the parks system. These areas protect against storm damage, flooding and erosion, and reduce economic loss of coastal assets.
- Parks tourism creates jobs. The 50 million visits to National, State and Metropolitan Parks see tourists spending $2.1 billion per year, and generates 20,000 jobs. Of course, this must be managed carefully.
I’m sure there are times when you’ve been to a National Park and found overflowing rubbish bins and damaged facilities.
Or tracks smothered by invasive weeds. Riverbanks damaged by deer or pigs, signage damaged, or pollution on our beaches.
Imagine instead that the weeds and feral animals are well controlled, picnic areas well maintained, serviced and environmentally sensitive. Imagine decent visitor centres, plentiful and accurate signage, well planned and maintained trails and tracks, and Rangers around when you need them.
Quite frankly, managing 18% of Victoria and around 5% of our marine waters with less than half a per cent of the state’s expenditure is a joke.
We’re advocating for our National Parks to be managed by a well-resourced team of the very best scientists and land managers.
It’s what your great natural heritage needs – and deserves.
Please make your gift today to power our campaign for 1% of the state budget to properly protect parks.
