Wilderness Society welcomes historic decision to revoke a section of National Park in Cape York

MEDIA RELEASE
Friday 26th November 2010

The Wilderness Society has welcomed the revocation of a section of Mungkan Kandju National Park in Cape York Peninsula in anticipation of the land being returned to its Traditional Owners.

A motion proposing the revocation was last night passed by the Queensland Parliament with bipartisan support resulting in 75,530 hectares of land, or 17%, of the former National Park area being excised.

“The Wilderness Society supports the removal of this land from the National Park so that it can be returned to its Traditional Owners, and we congratulate the Wik Mungkan people on this historic land rights outcome. We hope this resolution will go some way towards rectifying matters of land injustice that have been a major and longstanding source of hurt and conflict or the Wik Mungkan”, said Mr Anthony Esposito, National Campaigner and Manager of the Wilderness Society Indigenous Conservation Program.

In 1977, the Bjelke-Peterson Government declared the Archer Bend pastoral holding lease as National Park, effectively preventing acquisition of that lease by Traditional Owners, including Mr John Koowarta. This great injustice has remained unfinished business.

As a member of Queensland’s Cape York Tenure Resolution Implementation Group (CYTRIG), the Wilderness Society supports the return of National Parks to Traditional Owners. It is through this forum that the Wilderness Society endorsed today’s decision. The final arrangements for Mungkan Kandju will see cooperative management of the National Park, and a voluntary nature refuge on some of the new parcel of Aboriginal land.

“This is also a significant day for the Wilderness Society as it marks the first time that our organisation has supported an area of National Park being revoked. But given the circumstances in this case, we welcome such a great outcome”, said Mr Esposito.

CYTRIG is delivering the largest program of land tenure reform, Aboriginal land rights and conservation in the nation. To date, the Cape York tenure program has delivered nearly 600,000 hectares of new National Parks and over 600,000 hectares of Aboriginal freehold, of which 90,000 hectares has been declared nature refuge.