Yanga - From Farm to National Park - or How to strip Income from regional NSW for conservation.

YANGA

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/NationalParks/parkHome.aspx?id=N1137

Prior to it becoming a national park it was a working farm.
Farm income was around $2.49 million with expenditure of $2.33million & employed 14 people..



The park was purchased in 2005 for $25.5 million Dollars
It appear to have direct annual costs of $1.2 million it was unclear if this was including the wages for 8 Staff.


It has 19,000 visitors per year based on data collected from traffic counters.


The current visitor numbers are less than 40% of the projected 50,000 visitors a year.


So how involved is the local community? Well over the past 7 years the number of volunteers has grown to 10.


Impact on Region:
1. Local Councils have lost over $500,000 in Rates over the 7 years since the Park was created
2. Regional Business revenues have declined by over $8.3 million over the 7 years since the Park was created


A quote from local Council Member reported in a recent press article:

"People can't comprehend they (the NSW Government) don't have enough money to build a hospital, but they've got enough to buy a property that we don't see the benefits in tourism from."



Yanga is only one of the purchases in the Riverina.
There are some purchases, like Darcoola has virtually no visitors since it was opened and others that have not yet open.

List of Purchases

If Yanga is indicative of the impact of converting private land to National Park, you have to say that the arrival of national park in your region is going to be an economic disaster.

In the case of Yanga, $25.5m spend to purchase plus $1.2m a year in running cost is all for the benefit of just 19,000 people a year.


Most of this information has been taken from the following submission to the NSW Parliment Enquiry into Public Lands Management, with some further information/comment from the article "No Love for NSW National Parks"


Link to Submissionhttp://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/f87e068690f56fd2ca257a7800040573/$FILE/0332%20NSW%20Government.pdf

Link to Article
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/03/12/452561_national-news.html










 

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