NSW is home to the world’s second-oldest national park. Every day, PSA members at the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) take this honour seriously, protecting the state’s extensive network of reserves that covers everything from deserts, to alpine peaks and subtropical forests.

Below are just some examples of the work they do.

Threatened species projects

The NPWS is the first national park agency in Australia to set a zero extinctions target, and one of the first in the world. Around 84 per cent of the approximately 900 threatened species in NSW are found in the state’s protected parks and reserves.

“NPWS Officers are public servants working to ensure the survival of our native flora and fauna; something that will inform the survival of all of us,” said PSA CPSU NSW General Secretary Stewart Little. “While day-to-day economic survival is consuming most of us, our members at National Parks in NSW are implementing an ambitious but essential program to save our most vulnerable plants and animals. The largest threats include feral animals, invasive weeds, changed fire regimes and climate change, and to address these more significant issues our members have developed a number of strategies.”

Firstly, there is a declaration of important threatened species habitat as an Assets of Intergenerational Significance. This means that the NSW NPWS has increased ability to prioritise management at these sites and identify emerging threats, so rapid interventions can take place.

The next strategy is the acquisition of key threatened species habitat for addition to the national park estate. This gives our members the ability to bring habitat into the protection of NSW NPWS. The establishment of a network of feral predator-free areas to support the return of locally extinct species is a third significant strategy. Started in 2016 with three partnership sites in western NSW, this strategy has expanded to ten sites, with seven new areas managed by NSW NPWS.

The ultimate aim is to reintroduce native mammal species listed as extinct in NSW and restore ecosystems.

The delivery of the largest feral animal control program in national park history is also underway. Finally, NSW NPWS has established a dedicated ecological risk unit to safeguard threatened species and are rolling out a world-class ecological health framework across national parks.

Walking tracks and visitor facility construction

PSA member Tim Lanyon is the Principal Project Officer Infrastructure in the Blue Mountains Branch of NSW NPWS. He and Senior Project Officer Steve Nichol have been working on walking tracks in the Blue Mountains for decades.

The first ever walking track to be built in Australia is said to be the Princes Walking Track at Wentworth Falls, which was built in 1867 and has been maintained continuously ever since. Most recently further maintenance and upgrades have been undertaken token to provide better access to lookouts in the Wentworth Falls area of the national park.
The Fairfax Track at Govetts Leap was the first walking track that Mr Lanyon worked on. It starts at the park’s visitor centre and is a pleasant, graded walk down to the lookout at Govetts Leap. It’s an all-access walking track and is regularly used by families with prams and people requiring wheelchair access. Throughout the greater Blue Mountains area there is approximately 300km of walking tracks.

Mr Nichol commenced work in the Blue Mountains in 2015 and became an Assets Officer in 2018 when there was a significant increase in resourcing for facilities and walking tracks in the NSW NPWS. With this increase in resourcing, 50km of walking track have been either maintained or upgraded. Further work undertaken by Mr Lanyon, Mr Nichol and their crews included the further construction of infrastructure including upgrades of facilities at a range of locations including Govetts Leap, Evans Lookout in Blackheath and the Conservation Hut precinct at Wentworth Falls, all located within Blue Mountains National Park.

In additional to these works an upgrade of the Wombeyan Caves precinct has been completed and works at Abercrombie Caves have commenced. This will include an upgrade of the visitor centre, walking tracks and cave access.

All the work that our members do in these areas provide responsible, safe, and scenic access to the state’s native wilderness in all its sublime beauty.

Upgrading visitor facilities

Planning is underway for the new Dorrigo Arc Rainforest Centre and Dorrigo Escarpment Great Walk in Dorrigo National Park on the NSW mid-north coast. The Dorrigo Arc Rainforest Centre and Dorrigo Escarpment Great Walk will be an impressive addition to the work PSA members in NSW NPWS are already carrying out to improve the existing walkways.

Koala management and protection

“Koalas are in the top three most familiar Australian animals in the world,” said Mr Little. “So, it’s always jarring to hear that we are not doing our best to look after them. In some instances, those in power have actually made decisions that fly in the face of looking after the marsupials.

“Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian even earned the nickname ‘Koala Killer’ from a political satirist, after the Premier and her Nationals deputy introduced a bill to the NSW parliament which greatly undermined the protections of koala habitat. Thankfully, saving koala habitat is core to the proposed Great Koala National Park.”

In 2012, four environment groups – the Bellingen Environment Centre, Nambucca Valley Conservation Association, Clarence Environment Centre and North Coast Environment Council collaborated with the National Parks Association of NSW (NPA) to engage an ecologist to assess the status of koala populations on the Mid North Coast of NSW. The outcome being without major amendments to how koala populations and their habitats are protected, the animals will be all but extinct in NSW by 2050.

Despite the Commonwealth Government formally listing NSW Koalas as vulnerable, and the NSW Government listing them as endangered, in 2021 the NSW Coalition Government did not accept the recommendation of creating a Great Koala National Park. Since the Labor Party won government in NSW in 2023 the Minns Government has committed to creating a national park focusing on koala habitat on the mid north coast. The 2023–24 State Budget committed $80 million in funding over four years to support the development of the Great Koala National Park.

Unfortunately, this project has been marred by politics. In December 2024 deputy leader of the NSW Nationals and member for Coffs Harbour, Gurmesh Singh, along with Nationals member for Clarence, Richie Williamson and member for Oxley Michael Kemp announced their opposition to the Minns Labor Government’s Great Koala National Park.

However, the PSA is involved in this an ambitious plan, and is working with its members in Forestry Corp who are affected by the park’s establishment.

Hundreds of hours of work have gone into the detailed plans for the park. It is proposed to include a gateway visitor centre at Coffs Harbour on the Pacific Highway adjacent to Bongil Bongil National Park. The centre will provide visitor information, Gumbaynggirr cultural information, a café, educational space and the koala hospital. The centre will be the launch point for various park activities including koala spotting tours, Indigenous cultural tours and trail hiking. Within the park a total of 315,000 hectares of koala habitat that would all be public land. Already, 140,000 hectares is protected as conservation reserves, while the remaining 175,000 hectares are currently classified as state forest. The state forests are a critical part of the proposal, containing much of the best koala habitat in the region.

According to the Department of Environment and Heritage, while the assessment work is proceeding, the government will cease timber felling in allocated koala hubs which are in the assessment area. The koala hubs are areas with strong evidence of multi-generational, high-density koala populations.

Cetacean rescue

PSA members at the NPWS look after the state’s natural environments off our coastlines as well. In NSW we are fortunate to witness the yearly migration of whale species, particularly off the central coast of NSW. Because of fishing activity, and shark nets, the whales can become entangled.

To deal with this, the NPWS has established the Large Whale Disentanglement team. The section includes 45 professionals, 11 of whom are based out of the Hunter Central Coast branch. The team ensures state-wide coverage for whale rescue operations during the migration season.

“One of the whale species we are privileged to see each year is the humpback whale,” said Mr Little. “Every year they undertake one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom, travelling up to 10,000km from the Southern Ocean to breeding grounds in warmer climates to the north. As they travel through inshore Australian waters, humpback whales are susceptible to becoming entangled which can lead to fatigue, injury, and death. Thankfully, each year NSW NPWS members free about 10 animals from entanglement.”

The actions the teams take involve launching small inflatable boats, along with a larger support vessel, and approaching an entangled animal and assessing the entanglement, the animal’s condition, speed and behaviour. They then plan a release strategy to cut the animal free, which sometimes involves slowing the animal down by temporarily attaching large buoys.

The rescues can often take multiple days of tracking before a successful intervention can be made. The NPWS crew work with partner organisations including Marine Rescue, the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia and Sea World to optimise state-wide coverage for whale rescue operations.

The Large Whale Disentanglement team is one component of a broader project to understand and minimise the risk of humpback whale entanglements. The NSW Government is working with the fishing industry to develop whale and dolphin-friendly equipment less likely to lead to entanglements, while scientific research continues to better understand the drivers of whale migration and entanglement risks.

“The work that our members in NSW NPWS perform is highly specialised,” said Mr Little. “These public servants are dedicated to the work they do, and the NSW Government should be proud that this department operates, not to bring in increasing revenue – although they do manage this as well – but to stop the state’s natural environment from collapsing further into a condition of irretrievable ruin.

“They are Champions of the State.”

NSW is home to the world’s second-oldest national park. Every day, PSA members at the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) take this honour seriously, protecting the state’s extensive network of reserves that covers everything from deserts, to alpine peaks and subtropical forests.

Below are just some examples of the work they do.

Threatened species projects

The NPWS is the first national park agency in Australia to set a zero extinctions target, and one of the first in the world. Around 84 per cent of the approximately 900 threatened species in NSW are found in the state’s protected parks and reserves.

“NPWS Officers are public servants working to ensure the survival of our native flora and fauna; something that will inform the survival of all of us,” said PSA CPSU NSW General Secretary Stewart Little. “While day-to-day economic survival is consuming most of us, our members at National Parks in NSW are implementing an ambitious but essential program to save our most vulnerable plants and animals. The largest threats include feral animals, invasive weeds, changed fire regimes and climate change, and to address these more significant isues our members have developed a number of strategies.”

Firstly, there is a declaration of important threatened species habitat as an Assets of Intergenerational Significance. This means that the NSW NPWS has increased ability to prioritise management at these sites and identify emerging threats, so rapid interventions can take place.

The next strategy is the acquisition of key threatened species habitat for addition to the national park estate. This gives our members the ability to bring habitat into the protection of NSW NPWS. The establishment of a network of feral predator-free areas to support the return of locally extinct species is a third significant strategy. Started in 2016 with three partnership sites in western NSW, this strategy has expanded to ten sites, with seven new areas managed by NSW NPWS.

The ultimate aim is to reintroduce native mammal species listed as extinct in NSW and restore ecosystems.

The delivery of the largest feral animal control program in national park history is also underway. Finally, NSW NPWS has established a dedicated ecological risk unit to safeguard threatened species and are rolling out a world-class ecological health framework across national parks.

Walking tracks and visitor facility construction

PSA member Tim Lanyon is the Principal Project Officer Infrastructure in the Blue Mountains Branch of NSW NPWS. He and Senior Project Officer Steve Nichol have been working on walking tracks in the Blue Mountains for decades.

The first ever walking track to be built in Australia is said to be the Princes Walking Track at Wentworth Falls, which was built in 1867 and has been maintained continuously ever since. Most recently further maintenance and upgrades have been undertaken token to provide better access to lookouts in the Wentworth Falls area of the national park.
The Fairfax Track at Govetts Leap was the first walking track that Mr Lanyon worked on. It starts at the park’s visitor centre and is a pleasant, graded walk down to the lookout at Govetts Leap. It’s an all-access walking track and is regularly used by families with prams and people requiring wheelchair access. Throughout the greater Blue Mountains area there is approximately 300km of walking tracks.

Mr Nichol commenced work in the Blue Mountains in 2015 and became an Assets Officer in 2018 when there was a significant increase in resourcing for facilities and walking tracks in the NSW NPWS. With this increase in resourcing, 50km of walking track have been either maintained or upgraded. Further work undertaken by Mr Lanyon, Mr Nichol and their crews included the further construction of infrastructure including upgrades of facilities at a range of locations including Govetts Leap, Evans Lookout in Blackheath and the Conservation Hut precinct at Wentworth Falls, all located within Blue Mountains National Park.

In additional to these works an upgrade of the Wombeyan Caves precinct has been completed and works at Abercrombie Caves have commenced. This will include an upgrade of the visitor centre, walking tracks and cave access.

All the work that our members do in these areas provide responsible, safe, and scenic access to the state’s native wilderness in all its sublime beauty.

Upgrading visitor facilities

Planning is underway for the new Dorrigo Arc Rainforest Centre and Dorrigo Escarpment Great Walk in Dorrigo National Park on the NSW mid-north coast. The Dorrigo Arc Rainforest Centre and Dorrigo Escarpment Great Walk will be an impressive addition to the work PSA members in NSW NPWS are already carrying out to improve the existing walkways.

Koala management and protection

“Koalas are in the top three most familiar Australian animals in the world,” said Mr Little. “So, it’s always jarring to hear that we are not doing our best to look after them. In some instances, those in power have actually made decisions that fly in the face of looking after the marsupials.

“Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian even earned the nickname ‘Koala Killer’ from a political satirist, after the Premier and her Nationals deputy introduced a bill to the NSW parliament which greatly undermined the protections of koala habitat. Thankfully, saving koala habitat is core to the proposed Great Koala National Park.”

In 2012, four environment groups – the Bellingen Environment Centre, Nambucca Valley Conservation Association, Clarence Environment Centre and North Coast Environment Council collaborated with the National Parks Association of NSW (NPA) to engage an ecologist to assess the status of koala populations on the Mid North Coast of NSW. The outcome being without major amendments to how koala populations and their habitats are protected, the animals will be all but extinct in NSW by 2050.

Despite the Commonwealth Government formally listing NSW Koalas as vulnerable, and the NSW Government listing them as endangered, in 2021 the NSW Coalition Government did not accept the recommendation of creating a Great Koala National Park. Since the Labor Party won government in NSW in 2023 the Minns Government has committed to creating a national park focusing on koala habitat on the mid north coast. The 2023–24 State Budget committed $80 million in funding over four years to support the development of the Great Koala National Park.

Unfortunately, this project has been marred by politics. In December 2024 deputy leader of the NSW Nationals and member for Coffs Harbour, Gurmesh Singh, along with Nationals member for Clarence, Richie Williamson and member for Oxley Michael Kemp announced their opposition to the Minns Labor Government’s Great Koala National Park.

However, the PSA is involved in this an ambitious plan, and is working with its members in Forestry Corp who are affected by the park’s establishment.

Hundreds of hours of work have gone into the detailed plans for the park. It is proposed to include a gateway visitor centre at Coffs Harbour on the Pacific Highway adjacent to Bongil Bongil National Park. The centre will provide visitor information, Gumbaynggirr cultural information, a café, educational space and the koala hospital. The centre will be the launch point for various park activities including koala spotting tours, Indigenous cultural tours and trail hiking. Within the park a total of 315,000 hectares of koala habitat that would all be public land. Already, 140,000 hectares is protected as conservation reserves, while the remaining 175,000 hectares are currently classified as state forest. The state forests are a critical part of the proposal, containing much of the best koala habitat in the region.

According to the Department of Environment and Heritage, while the assessment work is proceeding, the government will cease timber felling in allocated koala hubs which are in the assessment area. The koala hubs are areas with strong evidence of multi-generational, high-density koala populations.

Cetacean rescue

PSA members at the NPWS look after the state’s natural environments off our coastlines as well. In NSW we are fortunate to witness the yearly migration of whale species, particularly off the central coast of NSW. Because of fishing activity, and shark nets, the whales can become entangled.

To deal with this, the NPWS has established the Large Whale Disentanglement team. The section includes 45 professionals, 11 of whom are based out of the Hunter Central Coast branch. The team ensures state-wide coverage for whale rescue operations during the migration season.

“One of the whale species we are privileged to see each year is the humpback whale,” said Mr Little. “Every year they undertake one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom, travelling up to 10,000km from the Southern Ocean to breeding grounds in warmer climates to the north. As they travel through inshore Australian waters, humpback whales are susceptible to becoming entangled which can lead to fatigue, injury, and death. Thankfully, each year NSW NPWS members free about 10 animals from entanglement.”

The actions the teams take involve launching small inflatable boats, along with a larger support vessel, and approaching an entangled animal and assessing the entanglement, the animal’s condition, speed and behaviour. They then plan a release strategy to cut the animal free, which sometimes involves slowing the animal down by temporarily attaching large buoys.

The rescues can often take multiple days of tracking before a successful intervention can be made. The NPWS crew work with partner organisations including Marine Rescue, the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia and Sea World to optimise state-wide coverage for whale rescue operations.

The Large Whale Disentanglement team is one component of a broader project to understand and minimise the risk of humpback whale entanglements. The NSW Government is working with the fishing industry to develop whale and dolphin-friendly equipment less likely to lead to entanglements, while scientific research continues to better understand the drivers of whale migration and entanglement risks.

“The work that our members in NSW NPWS perform is highly specialised,” said Mr Little. “These public servants are dedicated to the work they do, and the NSW Government should be proud that this department operates, not to bring in increasing revenue – although they do manage this as well – but to stop the state’s natural environment from collapsing further into a condition of irretrievable ruin.

“They are Champions of the State.”