INSIGHTS INTO THE REFINEMENT OF QUEENSLAND’S NATIONAL PARK PROTECTION

By Margaret Moorhouse
Syd Curtis (1928-2016) was a committed proponent of the Cardinal Principle of national park management. His principled thinking was important in establishing a representative basis for selection of new national parks. He had initiated this approach after moving from forestry work to the Forestry Department’s national park section, in 1963.​
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The Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service (QNPWS) was not founded until 1975. Syd was QNPWS Director of Management and Operations and later (1992) Assistant Director (Policy and Legislation), retiring in 1988.

'Newspaws' March 1988 with Margaret Thorsborne's handwritten remarks.

The following is an excerpt from a 1989 letter from newly-retired Syd, published in an underground ex-employee QNPWS newspaper “Feral Cat”. The newsletter’s feline logo was a take on the QNPWS logo:

​"When I joined the Department of Forestry in 1946 on the advice of Dr. (later Professor) D.A. Herbert head of the University's Botany Department who predicted that a time would come when the Department  would use graduate staff on National Park administration, a public service career was something in which one could take pride, and the National Park concept was one of mankind's finest ideals. The latter is still true. And if Queensland changes its government to one that understands and respects the Westminster system of democracy, the  public service too may rise above its present problems, and again serve the wider community and not merely the political ends of the favoured few. Hang in there, you dedicated National Parks staff, you've got something tremendously important to fight for.  And you seem to have a strong ally in one Herbert F. Cat"!

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