Joint Management for Far North Queensland National Park

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Joint Management for Far North Queensland National Park

October 28, 2009

Environment / Play / Recreation /

The transfer of a far northwest Queensland national park to joint management by the Government and its traditional owners is the first of its kind.

Located 460 kilometres northwest of Cairns and previously known as Mitchell-Alice Rivers National Park, it has been renamed the Errk Oykangand National Park.

Established in October 1977, the park covers an area of 371 kilometres2 between the Mitchell and Alice Rivers.

A complex system of streams and wetlands, the entire park becomes inundated by wet season flooding each year.

Joint management of Queensland's national parks has been possible since the passing of the Aboriginal Land Act in 1991, yet this is the first park to be claimed by indigenous people since then.

The transfer is also the first old, or existing, national park to be jointly managed since the passing of the Cape York Peninsula Heritage Act in 2007.

Uw Oykangand elder Colin Lawrence said the move was the culmination of 19 years of "hard work and dedication to land management".

An Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) spokesman said it was an historic occasion that recognised the important role of indigenous people and their traditional knowledge in the management of the country's most important environmental areas.

The Errk Oykangand National Park will be a living cultural landscape of significance for the people of Kowanyama, whose township is 30km southwest, and in particular people from the Kunjen and Oykangand language groups.

Management of Errk Oykangand National Park will be carried out by members of the Kowanyama Aboriginal Land and Natural Resource Management Office based in Kowanyama.

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