National parks rangers have lost 30 per cent of their workforce since 2009 and the threat of further job losses and pay cuts is now real.
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Park rangers and their industrial advocates are mostly concerned about the loss of knowledge, or the dumbing down of experience required to manage increasingly complex parks policy – particularly in the area of fire management.
But a written plan put to the Office of Environment and Heritage last Wednesday at 5pm was dismissed out of hand before 9.30 the next morning.
Industrial advocate with the Public Services Association, Michael Sinclair, said the knock back on the plan to train raw recruits with experienced older rangers as a way of preserving knowledge was a kick in the teeth. A subsequent meeting with Minister Gabrielle Upton ‘went well, and she offered a ‘sympathetic ear’.
Nevertheless the threat remains that combined experience in fire management spanning ‘hundreds of years’ is in danger of being lost from the public service with parks’ neighbours among those most affected.
Bundjalung National Park neighbour John Fripp, ‘Doubleduke’, whose timbered property drains into the lower Clarence via Jacky Bulbin Creek said it was critical that the service looked after its ranger ranks to maintain good relationships with adjoining property holders.
“We don’t need any more cuts,” he said. “They’ve got a job to look after what they’ve got now.”
PSA’s Mr Sinclair said the threat of reduced ranger numbers was hard to fathom given the value of national parks in terms of tourism and the necessity of managing a Crown Land estate that covered more than eight per cent of NSW with particular emphasis on feral animals, weeds and most critically fire.
“Rangers write the fire plan and they implement it,” Mr Sinclair said. “They develop programs to preserve culture and heritage, to manage flora and fauna.”
Wildlife ecologist Dr Steve Phillips was once a North Coast ranger before he ‘bolted’ from the confines of public service and now works as a consultant specialising in koala management.
He noted the ‘decades of experience’ potentially lost through cuts could make the difference between ‘life and death’ when it came to implementing a complex fire plan.
A challenging climate and a political imperative to ‘burn the bush’ rather than carefully manage a complex ecosystem added to that complexity, said Dr Phillips.
“Under the current funding system it is increasingly difficult to implement a theoretical fire plan where you aim for minimum impact for maximum control.”
