Protecting beautiful Queensland: bringing a northern perspective to a statewide campaign
- Denis Walls
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
Denis Walls | Convenor
BirdLife Northern Queensland recently met with representatives of the Protect Beautiful Queensland alliance as the campaign begins conversations with conservation organisations and Traditional Owners across Far North Queensland.
BLNQ’s Denis Walls met with Hayley Troupe, Organising Coordinator with the Queensland Conservation Council (QCC), and Alex Benavides, Community Campaigner with the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre (CAFNEC), to discuss the region’s conservation priorities and opportunities for strengthening protection of important habitats.
As part of its statewide approach, Protect Beautiful Queensland is engaging with key stakeholders to ensure the campaign is informed by local knowledge and priorities. In Far North Queensland, CAFNEC and QCC are talking with conservation organisations, Traditional Owners and others about areas and habitats that should be prioritised, threats and gaps in existing protection, and how the campaign might support conservation work already underway in the region.
Protect Beautiful Queensland
Protect Beautiful Queensland is a non-partisan, evidence-based alliance bringing together conservation organisations, outdoor recreation groups, Traditional Owners and others with a shared goal of strengthening Queensland’s protected-area network.
Its central ambition is to double Queensland’s protected areas by 2030, to around 17% of the State, through a combination of national and conservation parks, Indigenous Protected Areas and privately protected land. The alliance also advocates for adequate funding and management of protected areas, support for private landholders protecting nature, and appropriate opportunities for nature-based recreation and tourism. First Nations leadership and cultural knowledge are identified as central to this work.
The scale of the challenge is considerable. Queensland supports an extraordinary diversity of landscapes, plants and animals, yet currently has the lowest proportion of protected land of any Australian state or territory. Protect Beautiful Queensland argues that expanding the protected-area network is essential not only for biodiversity conservation, but also for safeguarding cultural values, supporting regional communities and providing opportunities for people to experience nature.
One focus of the campaign is Queensland’s native State Forests. Queensland has around 2.9 million hectares of publicly managed State Forest, much of which provides important habitat for wildlife as well as recreational opportunities. Protect Beautiful Queensland is advocating for State Forests with high conservation value to transition to appropriate conservation tenure while, where compatible, retaining responsible recreational access.
Bringing Far North Queensland knowledge to the conversation
The campaign’s work in Far North Queensland is still at an early stage, providing an important opportunity for local knowledge and priorities to help shape its development in the region.
For BLNQ, the conversation provided an opportunity to bring a bird conservation perspective to that process.
Our region contains some of Australia’s most significant bird habitats, from the Wet Tropics rainforests and uplands to Cape York, tropical savannas, wetlands and coastal environments. Ensuring that decisions about future protected areas are informed by local ecological knowledge – including what we know about important bird habitat, threatened species and gaps in protection – will be an important part of identifying where additional protection can make the greatest difference.
The discussion with Hayley and Alex was an initial opportunity to share that knowledge and consider how a statewide campaign might complement the conservation work already being undertaken by organisations, communities and Traditional Owners across northern Queensland.
We look forward to continuing the conversation as the Protect Beautiful Queensland initiative develops its focus in the north.
More information about the campaign is available from Protect Beautiful Queensland.
