Daintree and Fraser Island worth $660 million annually

Media Release

Embargoed Until 11.00 am Tuesday, 19 March, 2002

The study carried out by Cairns based corporate advisers, Kleinhardt FGI Pty Ltd and funded with a generous grant by the San Francisco based Goldman Environmental Foundation shows that the area north of the Daintree River ferry generates $400 million annually while Fraser Island is worth $275 million.

The study is in response to increasing public concern that the expenditure of governments in managing natural areas may not be commensurate with their value to the economy and to obtain an independent assessment of what the real value to the economy is.

Cape Tribulation-based Foundation's Director of AUSTROP, Dr. Hugh Spencer, said that he hoped that the findings encourage the State and Federal Governments to improve their commitment to the conservation of the country's last remaining iconic wilderness areas.

He said that currently the combined spending by both the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments amounted to only about $5 million for each site annually while the Commonwealth Government is spending about $12 million on another World Heritage icon, Kakadu National Park, which has about 200,000 visitors each year.

Honorary Project Officer for the Fraser Island Defenders Organization, John Sinclair, said that it was significant that the conclusion of the Kleinhardt study coincides with the release of another study commissioned by the Queensland Government which showed that many areas on Fraser Island are being significantly overused.

He called for the amount of government funding devoted to the management of iconic World Heritage sites to be at least the equivalent to the amount spent by governments in supporting extractive industries.

He said that Fraser Island needed about $12 to $13 million annually to ensure that the visitation to the island can be managed sustainably and that the Daintree should have a commitment in the vicinity of $20 million.

"This would be putting them close to the visitor expenditure ratio of Kakadu National Park which receives for only about a quarter of the volume of visitation which the Daintree study area and Fraser Island receive between them. Despite this, the combined government of these two sites falls well short of the $12 million the Commonwealth Government spend in Kakadu, annually," Mr Sinclair said.

Mr. Sinclair will present t he study to the Environment Minister Dean Wells by this afternoon (Tuesday) in Brisbane.

For further information: The Executive Summary of the report is attached. The full study report will be available on the internet at www.fido.org.au from Tuesday, 19 March.