About Tasmania's National Parks and Reserves

Tasmania has 19 national parks, and a range of other reserved lands, protected for their natural and cultural importance. These areas represent a range of environments, including unique alpine flora, buttongrass plains, wild tannin-stained rivers, temperate rainforests and windswept beaches. The animals these habitats harbour are among the most intact faunal assemblages in the world.

However, the existing system of National Parks does not fully protect an adequate or comprehensive representation of the Tasmanian environment. The highest levels of biodiversity are found in the eastern half of the State, in diverse habitats such as sclerophyll forests and coastal heaths. Yet it is these ecosystems that are the least well protected, and are the habitat of many threatened species.

The Tasmania National Parks Association seeks to ensure that an adequate cross-section of Tasmania's natural heritage is protected and, to this end, supports proposals for a number of new reserves.

Further, Tasmania's exisiting National Parks are increasingly under threat. These celebrated places are at risk of exploitation from inappropriate development, insufficient management of visitor impact and inadequate funding to ensure control or eradication of threatening processes.

The TNPA offers all Tasmanians a voice to ensure that Tasmania's National Parks and reserves are managed with appropriate regard to the conservation of the very values for which they were proclaimed.