With reference to the State Government's recent announcement of new targets for the amount of Protected Area in Queensland, what initiatives will be put in place to ensure these targets are met?

ANSWER

On 28 March 2008 at the celebration for the 100th anniversary of the dedication of Queensland's first national park, the Premier announced that the national park estate will be expanded.

Two commitments were made on the day; the first, that by 2020 the area of National Park in Queensland will be expanded by 50 percent, to 7.5 percent of the State from the current area of around 5 percent. In addition the Premier announced that the new protected areas target is 20 million hectares by 2020.

Funding for this massive expansion will come from the innovative green fund, Eco Fund Queensland (EcoFundQ). EcoFundQ will allow the Government, companies and, in time, even interstate and overseas entities to invest in this fund. Proponents of developments which may have some unavoidable environmental impacts will be able to approach the new EcoFundQ and offset these impacts by a financial contribution to the Fund. This will only be after all other measures have been avoided and mitigation impacts have been taken.

The EcoFundQ initiative reinforces the Government's long-standing program of continued national park expansion via a combination of negotiated purchases from private landowners, conversion of the non-plantation State forest estate to protected area under the Queensland Forest Process and the negotiated surrenders of areas of State land when leaseholders seek conversion to higher tenures.

Areas to be purchased may be in any part of Queensland, provided that they have suitable high biodiversity values not adequately represented in the existing national park estate.

While broad areas of interest have been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency, purchase of any specific property will be dependent on that property being made available for sale by a willing vendor, and a mutually satisfactory price being negotiated.

Queensland is the most biologically diverse State in a mega-diverse continent, and the first 100 years of National Parks in this State is a proud legacy upon which we will continue to build until we have optimised the representation of biodiversity for the benefit of today's citizens and tomorrow's.