Photo credit: Powerful Owl in the Mirboo North IPA, by Bill Blomeley via Preserve Our Forests Mirboo North.

Friends of the Earth Melbourne welcomes the long-awaited creation of protected areas via Minister Dimopoulos' Parks and Public Land Bill 2025.

New legislation introduced into Victorian Parliament yesterday will deliver the Mount Buangor, Pyrenees and Wombat-Lerderderg national parks, the Cobaw and Hepburn conservation parks and expand the Bendigo regional park. 

Mirboo North Immediate Protection Area, identified for priority protection back in 2019, will also be permanently protected as a new conservation park. 

Congratulations to the many community groups, including Wombat Forest Care, Wombat Action Group, Preserve Our Forests Mirboo North and the Victorian National Parks Association for securing this win. After long-running campaigns to protect the forests of Western Victoria and Mirboo North, these groups have also been instrumental in securing the legislation of these reserves since Labor’s 2021 announcement.

Gayle Osborne of Wombat Forestcare said:

“Our community has worked so hard to have the Wombat recognised for its incredible wildlife. For more than the 14 years Wombat Forestcare has campaigned for ‘park’ status for the forest, so many people have attended protest events, written letters to politicians and supported the campaign in so many ways.”

The Labor government announced in its press release that the new legislation will protect Victoria’s iconic native flora like Mount Cole Grevillea, Pyrenees Gum and rare and threatened species like the Powerful Owl, Barking Owl, Swift Parrot and Southern Greater Glider.

“The new parks provide safe homes for our famous wildlife and boost local regional economies by keeping Victoria at the top of every visitor’s bucket list, ” said Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos.

FoE also welcomes the news that Yellingbo Landscape Conservation Area will now be formally re-named Liwik Barring Landscape Conservation Area, meaning ‘Ancestors Trail’ in the Woi Wurrung language of the Wurundjeri People.

Provisions of the bill also facilitate the granting of Aboriginal title under the Traditional Owner Settlement Act 2010 over several parks to the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation and the Taungurung Land and Waters Council in accordance with their recognition and settlement agreements with the state. The relevant provisions create Wandong Regional Park under the CLR Act (clause 10) and update the plans used in defining Kinglake National Park (clause 84), Avon Wilderness Park (clause 85) and Cathedral Range State Park (clause 86) under the National Parks Act.

We thank Minister Dimopolous for delivering on Labor’s promise to legislate the protection of these forests. 

We’re hopeful that future announcements from Minister Dimopoulos will include: 

- Deliver the full promised Western Parks package, including regional parks. 

- Fund and support holistic, hands-on, low-impact bio-cultural restoration and monitoring programs in the new Western parks by sufficiently resourcing Traditional Custodians.

- Legislative changes that prevent logging and industrial extraction (including salvage logging and mining) from occurring ever again in forests, right across Victoria, regardless of tenure. This should include ensuring permanent, legislative protection for the forests of the Central Highlands, North East Alps, East Gippsland and Strzelecki Ranges.

- The creation of Taungurung Land & Waters Council's Cultural Reserve land category under the Public Land Act, as a response to the Strathbogie Ranges Immediate Protection Area process that ran parallel to the Mirboo North IPA process & recommended a Cultural Reserve Pilot. Expand TLaWC's authority to collaboratively care for the Tallarook Forest and Yawang cultural landscape, as well as Nun Nun Tun cultural landscape and Deberra Biik cultural landscape in the Central Highlands.  

- Deliver a plan for the pro-active restoration of the 8,000 hectares of mountain ash and mixed forest ecosystems across the Central Highlands that has failed to regenerate after logging. Deliver a restoration plan for the tall forests of East Gippsland and the Alpine landscapes of the North East (including improving existing Alpine ash re-seeding programs and launching an investigation into the health of snow gum woodlands).  

- Respond to the Ecosystems Inquiry report 2021 and the Cultural Landscapes Strategy 2021 by delivering well-resourced, holistic programs to improve habitat and enable bio-cultural knowledge gathering and ecological science to inform and consolidate land management prescriptions. Governance changes in land management that assert the rights and decision making power of First Peoples on Country should accompany Treaty. Programs that prioritise Healthy Country on both a landscape scale and a localised, place-specific way should guide all land management activity.

- Design public education programs and invest in infrastructure, local jobs and participatory volunteer programs to ensure a circular benefits and a relationship of reciprocity (not extraction) between tourism, recreation and Victorian forest ecosystems going forward.

Read more about the Parks and Public Land Bill 2025 here. 

Get involved:

We’re collaborating with our allies to mobilise for the Greater Glider. Join us to hold all levels of government to account when it comes to valuing habitat and implementing recovery plans for threatened species. Show up for the Saturday on October 4 to call for the protection and restoration of Glider habitat, RSVP here.

Check out the new Western Victoria parks by joining FoE in the Wombat forest for an on Country working bee with Traditional Custodians DJAARA here.

Photo credit: Greater Glider by Justin Cally.