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.
»
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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