Valuing Victoria’s Parks
This new government report details the ecosystem services provided by the states parks and reserves. It includes the water and carbon values, biodiversity protection, recreational benefits and employment, and loads more. If this is what a small section of Victoria’s natural areas can offer – just imagine how much more benefit we would get from protecting all natural areas from logging and exploitation.
Just one small section states that:
The Victorian parks network is a major carbon sink with at least 270 million tonnes of carbon stored in land-based parks and 850,000 tonnes in marine parks. This is around nine times the Victoria’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
• The Alpine National Park accounts for more than one quarter of the carbon stocks in the Victorian parks network.
Read a PDF summary of the report here or the full report (MS Word) here or here