ABOUT 22 million people visit National Parks in NSW each year and the State Government has plans to capitalise on those numbers by encouraging more partnerships between the tourism industry and National Parks.
Montague Island, one of the jewels in this region’s tourism crown, is being held up as an example of how it can be done.
A taskforce has been established to explore this potential and tourism operators with ideas of their own are being encouraged to make submissions before the deadline of Friday, August 29.
NSW Tourism Minister Matt Brown and the Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Verity Firth jointly established the Taskforce on Tourism and National Parks, and local tourism chief John Pugsley believes the initiative is a real opportunity for the Eurobodalla region to develop sustainable tourism experiences using the natural assets of National Parks, forests and reserves in the region.
Minister Brown says nature tourism is a major drawcard for visitors to NSW.
“The State has outstanding natural assets with great potential to increase sustainable tourism (and) we want to encourage more partnerships between tourism operators and managers of National Parks, forests and reserves,” he said.
Ms Firth believes that encouraging people into national parks teaches them about the importance of conservation. She cites the award-winning Montague Island tours as an example of bringing visitors in close contact with nature without detracting from a protected area’s conservation value.
“On Montague Island, visitors can now roll up their sleeves, contribute to conservation work and penguin monitoring on the island, and stay overnight in the newly refurbished lighthouse keeper’s cottage,” she said.
“The Taskforce will provide us with recommendations as to how we can foster such activities, but in order to make the best recommendations they need to hear from the community.” Eurobodalla Coast Tourism (ECT) manager John Pugsley says the South Coast Regional Tourism Organisation and ECT will be making broad submissions to the Taskforce, but he also encourages individual tourism operators who have ideas they feel are worth pursuing to submit them.
Written submissions for the Taskforce can be emailed to parksandtourism@tourism.nsw.gov.a u.