Parks and Wildlife review highlights safety and pest issues in state’s National Parks
VISITOR safety and pest and disease control in Tasmania’s National Parks have been compromised by insufficient funding and out-of-date management plans, according to a damning report.
The audit of Tasmania’s Parks and Wildlife Service by Auditor-General Rod Whitehead found PWS was unaware of rescues performed by emergency services in its own National Parks.
“This lack of knowledge could result in PWS not being able to assess whether there may be an ongoing safety concern and taking action to prevent a re-occurrence,” he said.
Mr Whitehead found safety incidents had climbed sharply from 2010 to 2014 and recommended PWS investigate whether this was an indicator of falling safety standards.
He recommended PWS liaise with emergency services.
Mr Whitehead said management plans were outdated, there were no systematic processes to identify threats and the threats were not routinely monitored or managed.
PWS had identified and documented threats, but some documents were more than 10 years out of date, he said.
“l found little evidence of a structured maintenance program for less-used assets such as walking and four-wheel drive tracks.”
He said he had not been persuaded that “sufficient priority was being given to pest, weed and disease control”.
A government spokesman said the audit only focused on part of the works done.
“In particular, the reported low level of funding on pest, disease and weed control does not reflect the overall expenditure from within DPIPWE, other government and non-government organisations.”
He said the use of only two business plans to generate financial data did not accurately represent overall spending.