Draft:Lake Pedder National Park

Lake Pedder National Park was a national park in the island state of Tasmania, Australia. The park's proclamation as a scenic reserve was gazetted on 16 February and 23 March 1955 under section 7 of the Scenery Preservation Act 1915. Lake Pedder National Park was created to protect the scenic values of the original Lake Pedder and its surrounds. The park's date of creation was 23 March 1955, being the gazettal date of Statutory Rule 17 of 1955.

SIMPLIFY above (and next para?) and put detail under park creation, below

The controversy surrounding the proposed (and ultimately actual) flooding of Lake Pedder began in the 1960s. While preparations for a hydro-electric development in the area had begun in about 1963, the laws that created Lake Pedder National Park and protected its values remained largely unaltered for 13 years after the park's proclamation. (Amendments to the Scenery Preservation Act in November 1964 had, in fact, modestly strengthened the park's protections.) Serious legislated changes began in 1968, firstly affecting the national park and, eventually, the lake the park was created to safeguard.

HEADING: The park's central value - the original Lake Pedder

The original Lake Pedder with its great, mega-rippled quartzite beach, was known as the jewel of Tasmania's south-west wilderness.

The Aboriginal people of Tasmania occupied the buttongrass moorlands of western and south-western Tasmania for tens of thousands of years. These vast areas of buttongrass are considered evidence of anthopogenic (human-caused) firing of a cultural landscape. The buttongrass plains surrounding the original Lake Pedder are contiguous, apart from occasional threads of forest lining the creeks and rivers, with those of Tasmania's west coast, where Aboriginal people are known to have lived until the 1830s. The nearest point on the west coast, Mulcahy Bay, is about 40 kilometres (25 mi) from the original Lake Pedder.

The first European to see Lake Pedder is said to have been surveyor John Helder Wedge, during an expedition in early 1835. Wedge's superior, George Frankland, Surveyor-General of Van Diemen's Land as Tasmania was then known, subsequently reported that Wedge and his party had "reached two beautiful lakes ... lying in the heart of the most romantic Scenery and ... surrounded by lofty mountains". Wedge had named the larger lake after his friend John Lewes Pedder, Chief Justice of Van Diemen's Land. The smaller lake just to its east he had named Lake Maria, after Pedder's wife. Like the larger lake, Lake Maria also had a quartzite beach on its eastern side. Frankland's name now applies to the range of mountains west and south of the original Lake Pedder, the Frankland Range, which provided the dramatic backdrop to the lakes that he described.

[First plane landing in 1947]

HEADING - a new national park

[National park proposal - Quarmby]

At the time of its proclamation in 1955, Lake Pedder National Park was described as being approximately 59,000 acres (24,000 ha) in area. The park was bounded by five straight lines connecting the summits of Coronation Peak, Mount Helder, Harlequin Hill, Scotts Peak and Cinder Hill. (IMAGE) Modern digital mapping estimates the park's area as 26,895 hectares (66,460 acres).

While a scenic reserve could be created under the Scenery Preservation Act, the reserve's formal naming, including the application of the term national park, fell to other legislation, as there were no naming provisions in the Scenery Preservation Act. [MENTION 2-step process for naming, altering, rescinding, under SC Act - to allow for public comment] The intention to formally name Lake Pedder National Park under the nomenclature provisions of the Survey Co-ordination Act 1944 was gazetted on 9 February 1955. This name was eventually confirmed in the Tasmanian Government Gazette of 28 October 1964.

[INCLUDE above information in para solely devoted to naming/nomenclature (below)? ]

HEADING - Changes to the park

(PARAGRAPH RE THE HYDRO DEVELOPMENT)

Although it is believed by many that Lake Pedder National Park was revoked to make way for the hydro development, this never actually occurred. On 18 February 1970, a proclamation was gazetted revoking an area of 89 acres (36 ha) "or thereabouts" in the vicinity of Lake Edgar, from the national park for the purpose of hydro works. This relatively minor revocation did not directly affect Lake Pedder. Since 1955 the original Lake Pedder has continuously been part of a national park and remains so today despite being submerged.

Lake Pedder National Park remained on the Tasmanian government's books until the 21st century, in name at least (see below). However, while the original lake's national park status has never been revoked or removed, the protections conferred upon the lake by this status have certainly been manipulated. This was presaged by Tasmanian Premier Eric Reece when he stated in June 1965 that, "there would be some modification of the Lake Pedder National Park area".

In 1968, Lake Pedder National Park was significantly enlarged and the first of two critical legislated changes weakening the national park's protections was imposed by the Tasmanian government. The second and more comprehensive of these changes was enacted 4 years later, in 1972. These two changes to Lake Pedder National Park, described in more detail below, allowed the hydro scheme to proceed free of any legal impediment. Eventually, later in 1972, the scheme completely inundated the original Lake Pedder, without the lake's national park status ever having been rescinded and despite the apparent impacts caused to the park's values, including the lake itself.

The state government's intention in 1968 was that Lake Pedder's national park status would remain (in fact, the new park would be much larger) but that the park's protections would be weakened to the point where they no longer had the potential to hinder the hydro-electric development.

HEADING: National park's first modification

[MENTION 1967 Hydro legislation.] On 16 October 1968, thirteen years after the creation of Lake Pedder National Park, a proclamation was gazetted under the Scenery Preservation Act that made two initial changes to the park. (IMAGE) Firstly, the area of the park was increased by about 8 times, to approximately 473,500 acres (191,600 ha). (IMAGE) Secondly, works carried out in the national park by or on behalf of the Hydro-Electric Commission were exempted from the protections applying to national parks and other scenic reserves under section 15 of the Scenery Preservation Act. The Scenery Preservation Board is mentioned in the proclamation as recommending this key provision enabling hydro-electric works within the park that many people felt the board was supposed to protect.

(Allan Knight SPB membership, W. Lines quote)

(Technical continuation of LPNP name, naming history)

Despite their name, most Australian national parks are declared, and are able to be modified or nullified, under the relevant state or territory's legislation, although additional Federal protections sometimes apply and take precedence over state and territory laws, such as in parks that also have World Heritage status.

(Pedder controversy's role in creation of NPWS)

Until the commencement in November 1971 of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1970, Tasmania's Scenery Preservation Board had overseen the creation and management of the state's scenic reserves including national parks, under the Scenery Preservation Act, while the Animals & Birds Protection Board did the same for wildlife sanctuaries declared under section 6 of the Animals and Birds Protection Act 1928. In 1971 both kinds of reserve were converted to protected areas under the new Act. Their management by the fledgling National Parks and Wildlife Service commenced in that year under a more effective legislative regime and with more competent administration.

HEADING: National park's second modification

By mid-1972, with the impoundment's waters rising behind the Serpentine Dam to cover the original Lake Pedder, the 1968 provisions weakening the protection of the national park were found to be wanting, when legal action was commenced by the conservationist group, the Lake Pedder Action Committee (LPAC):

... we received a lot of intelligence over the telephone. The most dramatic piece was the night when the phone rang and a message was given to take ... certain acts of Parliament to a certain lawyer in a certain law firm and ask their opinion about the validity of the Lake Pedder scheme. And we did exactly that. We didn't really know what it all meant, but we took those documents along ... and within a couple of hours, we had a case against the government on their illegal flooding of Lake Pedder. 

(Supreme Court challenge by LPAC, resignation of deputy premier)

In August 1972 the Hydro-Electric Commission (Doubts Removal) Act 1972 was passed by the Tasmanian parliament, in response to the litigation mounted by the LPAC. (IMAGE) This Act was retrospective in that it defended past as well as future hydro-electric works and their impacts, against any breach of the new National Parks and Wildlife Act or the earlier Scenery Preservation Act, effectively protecting the state government from any accusation it had broken its own laws. The doubts removal Act also exonerated the effects of the hydro works (including, specifically, "inundation") on the values of the national park, rather than merely the works themselves as in the 1968 provision.

South West National Park still exists today, now known as Southwest National Park. The original Lake Pedder, still submerged, lies within its boundaries. At around 618,300 ha (1,528,000 acres), the park is much larger than its original extent and is contiguous with the other 6 national parks of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. This World Heritage property "encompasses more than 1,580,000 hectares (3,900,000 acres), covering almost a quarter of the island state of Tasmania".

When first proclaimed, Lake Pedder National Park’s main value of course, was the original Lake Pedder itself, known as the jewel of South-west Tasmania. The lake's landforms were not greatly damaged by the waters of the hydro development but, as the waters rose, they concealed the original lake, extinguishing most of the life around its shores, and it was lost to subsequent generations.

[Floating, needs correcting] The new, larger national park was to be known as Southwest National Park