The 60-year vision of Noosa Parks Association to link a spine of national parks
running from Coolum Beach through Noosa Shire and up to Tin Can Bay is about to become a reality with the formal gazetting of Tewantin National Park expected by next April.
The 10,000-hectare Tewantin park represents the final breakthrough link between Noosa National Park and Cooloola National Park, bringing completion to a campaign which began seven years ago, when Noosa Parks Association (NPA) initiated an equal three-way partnership with the Queensland Government and the Tony Wellington-led Noosa Council to convert Tewantin, Ringtail and Yurol State Forests into a consolidated 10,000-hectare Tewantin National Park.
At the core of the partnership agreement, signed five years ago, each partner pledged $1.2 million to buy out an existing 90-year commercial logging licence held over Tewantin, Ringtail and Yurol state forests. NPA’s $1.2 million contribution came from two sources – $575,000 from the NPA National Park Land Acquisition Fund and a $625,000 loan repayable over five years.
While this repayment program may have seemed formidable for a community organisation, as NPA project officer Michael Gloster proudly told Noosa Today: “Over the past decade, NPA’s magnificent team of over 100 volunteers working at the Noosa National Park Visitor Information Centre has generated the necessary $1.2 million, with the last loan repayment being made in October this year.”
Over the same period, both Noosa Council and the Sunshine Coast Council have perpetually conserved council-owned land abutting Noosa National Park as gazetted nature refuges as,
slowly but surely, the missing conservation links between Noosa and the emerging Tewantin national parks have been eliminated.
When Tewantin National Park is gazetted, Noosa Shire will boast three iconic national parks:
• the new 10,000-hectare Tewantin National Park
• the 10,000-hectare Noosa National Park that NPA has been building since 1962
• the 70,000-hectare Cooloola National Park that NPA has been building since the 1970s.
Says Michael Gloster: “The three National Parks linked by Council Nature Refuges now provide perpetual protection against future State Governments or Noosa Council, or both, trying to increase the size of the development footprint across Noosa Shire. The bottom line is that Noosa’s environmental treasures and our Noosa way of life are now more strongly protected.
“Now NPA can focus on strengthening that spine with the addition of a Noosa River Conservation Park, by keeping Noosa and Tewantin national parks free of private-sector development leases, and by winding back existing and proposed private-sector development leases in Cooloola National Park.”
