By Anthony Brown
A debate on traditional Aboriginal hunting and gathering in national parks is hotting up in Queensland. One of the state's oldest conservation groups, the National Parks Association of Queensland, and a North Queensland environmental group called Sanctuary have delivered a petition of 12,500 names opposed to Aboriginal hunting and gathering in national parks to the State Department of Environment and Heritage. Their position has been strongly criticised by Aborigines and other ecologists.
Both groups are concerned that Queensland's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Acts of 1991 and the Nature Conservation Act of 1992 seem to allow Aboriginal and Islander peoples to take wildlife in national parks.
They believe that this threatens native wildlife, and they have called on the Queensland government to revoke those sections of the acts that appear to allow hunting and gathering.
The secretary of the National Parks Association of Queensland, George Haddock, said that the association and Sanctuary considered national parks as wildlife sanctuaries where native species could be protected.
"National parks to us are a sanctuary. In effect, they are areas in which wildlife is totally protected, and they have been ever since national parks were gazetted in Queensland. I think the general public consider national parks as a sanctuary where there's a total protection of wildlife", Haddock said.
However, when asked if he had any scientific evidence on the impact of traditional hunting and gathering on native species, Haddock said he did not.
"The fact is up to this stage there has been total protection, and we see no justification in changing that position", he said.
At a recent University of Queensland forum on Aboriginal Hunting in National Parks, organised by the Centre for Conservation Biology, Ross Johnstone, from the Aboriginal and Islander Affairs section of the Queensland Department of Family Services, said there was no scientific research done in Australia on the impact of traditional hunting and gathering on native wildlife.
Haddock said the association and Sanctuary had not spoken with Aboriginal groups about the issue. When asked why, he said: "Our association had a very strong feeling expressing a view".
Cape York Land Council deputy director David Byrne said traditional hunting and gathering would not have a significant impact on native wildlife.
Byrne said that when Aboriginal people did hunt, they mainly went after feral pigs. Feral pigs offered more meat than many native animals.
He said that the National Parks Association and Sanctuary had not consulted with the council on the issue.
He argued that they did not take into account 40,000 years of Aboriginal conservation management of the natural environment before European settlement. In 200 years, Europeans had caused more devastation to native wildlife than 40,000 years of Aboriginal management.
Byrne said that Aboriginal people were aware of the need not to over-hunt certain species and were prepared to discuss national parks management with conservation groups.
Both the Liberal and National parties in Queensland are opposed to traditional hunting and gathering in national parks.
The shadow environment minister, the National member for Burnett, Doug Slack, speaking in parliament in late August, said that if national parks were used by Aboriginal people for hunting, they were no longer national parks.
He said he had also received hearsay evidence of indiscriminate hunting of protected species by Aboriginal people in Iron Range National Park. "The allegations have been made in telephone conversations that I have had with several northern people whom I consider to be genuine."
However, the State Department of Environment and Heritage says it has received no complaints about hunting of native species in Iron Range National Park.
Slack said the department was afraid to reveal the truth "in fear of upsetting Aboriginal activists".
"It doesn't matter about the threat to endangered species or that the law is broken. It is all subjugated to Aboriginal politics, so the minister has done nothing", Slack claimed.
A world-renowned rainforest ecologist, Dr Len Webb, said Aboriginal people had a better track record for environmental preservation than Europeans. He was not concerned that traditional hunting and gathering would decimate native species.
"It's a superb bloody irony. We [Europeans], who have wrecked Australia in a quicker time than any other colonial people, now have the presumptuousness to deny Aboriginal people a bit of hunting and gathering", said Dr Webb.
"They have demonstrated a relationship to the land that we as whites are only now realising. We know that we should have the same relationship."
He said he viewed the opposition to traditional hunting and gathering in national parks as a continuation of the dispossession of Aboriginal people and as further evidence of European ignorance of Aboriginal culture.
Webb said the opposition came mainly from urban-living people who, unlike many modern farmers who also had a good environmental track record, did not appreciate the historical success of Aboriginal land management.
"I think it's a fundamentally racist attitude", Webb said.
A spokesperson for Queensland minister for the environment Molly Robson said that the minister was not responding to the petition. He said that the department would release a report on traditional use of native wildlife in December, based on public submissions it had received. The report will be available for public comment.