MEDIA RELEASE 29 August 2025 |
Premier urged to deliver promised parks to benefit nature and communities
The Victorian National Parks Association has launched full-page print ads in Bendigo and Ballarat calling on Premier Jacinta Allan to honour Labor’s four-yar-old commitment to create new national parks in the area. Critical for giving threatened wildlife landscape connection and permanent protection from exploitative uses, like commercial mining and logging the new parks will also provide economic benefits and recreational opportunities for local communities and visitors in central Victoria.
The targeted campaign highlights the large amount of threatened animals, plants and fungi, including Mt Cole Grevilleas, Brush-tailed Phascogales, Mountain Skinks and Powerful Owls, that remain without the landscape-scale protection Labor promised in June 2021.
‘Four years of broken promises is four years too long,’ said Matt Ruchel, Executive Director of the Victorian National Parks Association. ‘Every day we delay means more opportunities missed to protect wildlife and habitats and to look after nature for future generations.’
The ads outline the clear community benefits of the new parks, which would protect approximately 60,000 hectares in Wombat-Lerderderg, Mount Buangor and Pyrenees national parks, Cobaw Conservation Park, Wellsford Forest and the other parks and reserves.
The new parks will protect the headwaters of six major rivers, providing clean water for communities, boost nature-based tourism with long-term local economic benefits and provide safe recreation opportunities, including bushwalking, picnicking, camping, birding, mountain biking, four-wheel driving, trail bike riding and more.
‘These parks will safeguard our most precious wildlife – for instance just this winter, locals were thrilled to see huge numbers of critically endangered Swift Parrots in the area. Independent experts specifically recommended higher protections for our Box Ironbarks, as an outstanding example of remnant forest,’ said Wendy Radford from Bendigo and District Environment Council.
‘Our community has worked hard to have the Wombat Forest recognised for its incredible wildlife. The failure by the Allen government to legislate the promised national and other parks shows a complete disregard for protection of the natural environment,’ said Gayle Osborne from Wombat Forestcare.
VNPA and local nature groups are calling on Premier Allan to immediately introduce legislation to create the central west parks.
‘We’re not asking for anything new – we’re simply demanding the Premier honour the promises her party made to the Victorian people,’ Ruchel said. ‘Over 80 per cent of Victorians support new national parks – nature and community have waited long enough’.
