Create the Great Forest National Park
The forests and wildlife of the Central Highlands need protection
The forests and wildlife of the Central Highlands need protection
Create the Great Forest National Park
Add your voice
Standing tall amidst the verdant canopy are majestic flowering Mountain Ash trees, soaring over 100 meters into the sky. These towering giants are sanctuaries for the tiny yet Critically Endangered Leadbeater’s Possum.
Other residents include Wedge-tailed Eagles and mystical Sooty Owls, who call the rainforest gullies home. Powerful Owls, Australia’s largest, call out across the valleys as ever-illusive Masked Owls hunt for a feed amongst the canopy.
Amidst the rustling leaves and hidden hollows dwell elusive Smoky Mice, Southern Brown Bandicoots and a plethora of other marsupials. Some 70 other types of birds and 10 types of bats live here too.
We know that logging and thinning reduces the yield of water from our catchments. The best way to keep our water supply clean is to let these forests grow old, free from disturbance. Whilst native forest logging has currently been removed from these areas, it could return with the stroke of a pen.
Greater and Yellow-bellied gliders feed on the sap and leaves of large trees, some hundreds of years old! For our endangered wildlife to survive and flourish, these trees must stay in the ground, protected and respected for generations.
Until now the Yarra Ranges and Central Highlands have missed out on the protection they deserve. But if we let them grow we can once again have giants in our midst!
The forests and wildlife of the Central Highlands need protection
The forests and wildlife of the Central Highlands need protection
Victoria is the most cleared landscape in Australia, with a natural web of life struggling to thrive.
There’s an urgent need to safeguard the forests in the state’s east from loophole logging, extractive industries like mining, inappropriate development and a warming climate.
That’s why together with conservation groups, a science-based proposal for a Great Forest National Park was created.
When it becomes a reality, the Great Forest National Park will add 355,000 hectares to the 170,000 hectares of already protected areas in Victoria’s Central Highlands.
The proposed park enjoys widespread support among the Victorian community, and will create new and long-lasting tourism and land management jobs.
Globally renowned naturalists like Bob Irwin, Sir David Attenborough and Dr Jane Goodall, along with international, national, local nature, recreation and scientific groups, support the creation of the Great Forest National Park.
On Saturday 13 May, 2017 the summit of Mt Donna Buang in the Yarra Ranges National Park hosted 400 people who gathered to form a giant human sign spelling out support for a new Great Forest National Park in the Central Highlands and Gippsland.
The human sign was 60 metres long, 50 metres wide and made up of passionate people spelling out the words ‘We Love Parks’.
We acknowledge this area is part of the unceded traditional lands and waters of the Taungurung, Wurundjeri and Bunurong people and recognise their ongoing role in caring for Country.