Access & Regulatory
Issues Affecting the Ability to Bushwalk in Western Australia
Most bushwalkers are simply interested
in going for a good walk, but there are a number of forces that are likely
to make this more difficult in future. Presumably you are reading this because
you have an interest in bushwalking. The following affects all bushwalkers,
both those who walk with Clubs and those who walk only with family and friends
or as part of some other social function.
The Federation
of Western Australian Bushwalkers Inc, the peak body representing the
bushwalking Clubs in Western Australia, attempts to negotiate these issues,
but the outcome for much is essentially political, and if you can add your
influence, all bushwalkers are likely to benefit.
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Access to Water Catchment Areas for Traditional Bushwalking Activities
Federation of Western Australian Bushwalkers (FWAB) Draft Position Paper,
May 2007 (pdf - 140kb)
Insurance Issues
No leader or Club can conduct activities
without adequate insurance cover. Insurance providers are increasingly interested
in minimising the risk to which they are exposed. They increasingly insist
that Clubs adequately manage their own risk and inform them of what they
are doing with regards to risk minimisation.
All Clubs must become increasingly involved
in formally documenting their procedures or ultimately possibly lose access
to insurance cover.
Access & Liability
Land managers are increasingly adverse
to the risk of exposing their visitors to injury due inadequate skills,
fitness and/or competence, and the consequent exposure of operating staff
to danger in effecting a rescue.
The response has been to close sections
of land or to push for formal leader qualifications. This may be an appropriate
response to commercial operations where typically there is one experienced
leader and a number of inexperienced dependent participants, and where the
number of participants is a commercial issue. It is not appropriate for
bushwalking clubs where the participants are invariably non dependent and
group sizes more manageable.
Impacts on Water Catchments
The regulations surrounding traditional
bushwalking activity in water catchments in Western Australia appear to
be based on reducing the risk faced by managers of the catchments, rather
than on any real risk of adverse effects on water quality. This particularly
affects bushwalkers, because most of the bush that is within reasonable
distance of the city, and is used for bushwalking, is also water catchment.
Catchment operations managers informally
recognise that the risk to water quality posed by traditional bushwalking
activity is negligible, and that bushwalkers could be very useful additional
eyes and ears to monitor activities in catchments that could potentially
damage water quality. Policy managers on the other hand have said, “I
recognise that the risk that bushwalkers present is negligible however it
is an increased risk and I cannot agree to anything that increases risk”.
This attitude is at least partly based on incorrectly cited papers. One
in particular (Cilimburg, A et. al. Wildland Recreation and Human Waste,
published in 2000 in Vol 25 of Environment Management, Vol 25, No 6, pp
587 to 598) is quoted to say that improper disposal of human waste by bushwalkers
presents an insurmountable risk to water quality. The paper actually says,
“There is little evidence to suggest that the health hazard to humans
is great enough to impose further regulation in areas currently using catholes."
All WA bushwalking clubs impose catholes,
ie digging a small hole and burying the waste, as a means of waste disposal.
Another paper, quoted to say that bushwalkers pose a huge risk of damaging
vegetation through trampling and this can adversely affect water quality
(Cole D.N. and Spildie D.R., published in Journal of Environmental Management
1998 53 pp 61 to 71) is actually entitled "Hiker, Horse and Llama trampling
effects on native vegetation in Montana USA". In the paper’s concluding
paragraph there is the sentence, “The experimental data….can only
be applied to the vegetation types and trampling intensities included in
the experiment.” In WA, in any case, any possible trampling effect
from traditional bushwalking would be much less than that of the bulldozers
used to thin vegetation to increase runoff in catchments.
Access to ‘Tracks’
(or When is a Track not a Track?)
Much of the public expansion of bushwalking
is on trails like the excellent Cape to Cape Track and the Bibbulmun Track.
This is good for bushwalking and good for the community; and many people
who hitherto haven’t been able to, have discovered the delights of
bushwalking.
In Australian Standard AS2156 - 2001,
both these trails are Class 3 or 4. AS 2156 also recognises classes 5 and
6, which are unmarked routes across substantially unmodified terrain. These
'higher class' tracks are used by small numbers of bushwalkers, who leave
a trace that it is not noticed by most land managers. Because they can't
see them, land managers could possibly exclude walkers from using these
trails inadvertently, by closing secure parking areas, by allowing water
sources to fall into disuse, by closing access roads, by failing to conduct
timely hazard reduction burns, or even allocate the land to some other land
use.
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