Great Forests National Park

When we sat around that table, we didn’t think about starting a revolution. We thought about saving animals from extinction. We thought about recovering our local economies after fires. We thought about how we could protect what forest remained against more fires and climate change. The solution came in the form of a vision for the Central Highlands forests of Victoria, temporarily named the ‘Great Forest National Park’.

We were the people of the Central Highlands who survived ground zero of the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009. We lost 173 lives and experienced the right and wrong responses to nature after fires. Together we created a park proposal that could future-proof our water, forests, wildlife and carbon. It could also guard against more fire whilst