DON’T lock up national parks.

Queensland has the smallest amount of them in Australia.

These few storehouses for fauna and flora unique in the world cannot

become the exclusive plaything of a sport or tourist hide for the affluent.

After shocking, never before seen fire losses in NSW, these Queensland shelters for Australian plants, birds and other terrestrial animals, all diminished, threatened and even extinguished outside sheltered areas, are more important than ever.

Nerang National Park cannot become a high-impact bike zone imperilling others’ rights.

Bike riders have already been given, questionably, a million dollars worth of Commonwealth Games tracks inside national park.

But there appears to be a small percentage who want more, even though there are tracks for them at Hinze Dam, paid for by public purse.

What rights for wider public and impact of demands of, perceptibly, only some in biking community? Who are wider public? They are non-impact users who hike, observe nature, take time for peaceful experience, staying within recognised expectations for national parks, on designated tracks, not disturbing harmony and pattern of natural world, never carving out their own disruptive swathe through a protected area.

They are taxpayers who have perhaps never set foot in the national park but have ‘footed’ the bill to secure a large self-sustaining area near our city, lungs of our great metropolis and shelter for iconic endangered native animals and plants.

They are plant propagators, scientists, fauna protectors who know the cardinal, overriding intent of a national park is, unlike a regional recreation park, to ensure survival of species not created by humans but endowed to them.

They are future generations who deserve undisturbed areas remain so.

An environmental survey, management plan, assessment re: impacts on erosion, fire breaks, public safety and an all-user, thorough, inclusive, wide-ranging consultation is needed now.

SALLY SPAIN, WILDLIFE QUEENSLAND GOLD COAST BRANCH