Victoria Opens Three New National Parks to Protect Gliders, Owls and Platypuses

Somewhere in the Wombat Forest tonight, a greater glider will launch itself from the top of a eucalyptus tree, spread the furry membrane between its elbows and ankles, and sail as far as 100 meters through the dark to the next trunk. Above it, a powerful owl, Australia’s largest owl, will be hunting for exactly that kind of meal. Neither animal knows it, but as of this week, the forest they live in is a national park.

On Monday, October 5, the Australian state of Victoria formally proclaimed three new national parks across its central west. Together they protect more than 65,000 hectares of forest, roughly 250 square miles, and they are the state’s first substantial new national parks in about 15 years. For the local volunteers who spent well over a decade writing reports, counting animals and lobbying politicians, it was the finish line.

“It’s a fantastic day for nature and for Victorians, we have three new national parks!” said Matt Ruchel, executive director of the Victorian National Parks Association, in a statement highlighted by Good News Network.

This is a story about wildlife, but it is also a story about how ordinary people move a government. That part travels well, no matter which hemisphere you live in.

Meet the Three New Parks

According to Parks Victoria and reporting by Australasian Leisure Management, here is what changed on the map.

Wombat-Lerderderg National Park is the big one at 44,700 hectares. It sits between the spa town of Daylesford and Bacchus Marsh, west of Melbourne, and combines the existing Lerderderg State Park with additions from the Wombat State Forest. The area contains the headwaters of major river systems that feed farms and towns downstream. Wombat Forestcare, the local group that led the campaign, describes it as a stronghold for threatened species.

Pyrenees National Park covers 15,100 hectares west of Avoca. It folds in the Landsborough and Landsborough Hill nature conservation reserves along with parts of the St Arnaud-Pyrenees State Forest, and it provides habitat for platypuses and lace monitors, the big tree-climbing goannas that can reach about two meters in length.

Mount Buangor National Park is the smallest at 5,300 hectares, near the town of Beaufort. It includes the former Mount Buangor State Park and parts of the Mount Cole State Forest, and it protects the critically endangered Mount Cole grevillea, a flowering shrub found almost nowhere else on Earth.

The national parks are only part of the package. About 13,000 more hectares became new or expanded regional parks, conservation parks and bushland reserves, including Cobaw, Hepburn and Mirboo North conservation parks, seven new or expanded regional parks, and almost 30 nature and bushland reserves. Wellsford Forest was added to Bendigo Regional Park.

The Animals at the Heart of It

Ask the campaigners why these forests matter and the answer usually starts with one animal: the greater glider.

Greater gliders are about the size of a house cat, with big ears, huge dark eyes and a long tail. They eat almost nothing but eucalyptus leaves, and they need old, hollow trees to den in. That last detail is the problem. Tree hollows big enough for a glider can take a century or more to form, and they disappear quickly when old forests are cleared or burned. After the catastrophic 2019 and 2020 bushfires, Australia’s federal government listed the greater glider as endangered.

The powerful owl depends on the same old trees, both for nesting hollows and for the gliders and possums it hunts. It is Australia’s largest owl, and a healthy population is a good sign that a forest is working the way it should, from the leaves on up to the top predator.

The list goes on. The new parks shelter brush-tailed phascogales, small tree-climbing marsupials with bottlebrush tails; mountain skinks; platypuses in the creeks; and a long roster of rare plants and fungi. Wombat Forestcare also points to the Wombat leafless bossiaea, a plant found only in this part of Victoria.

If you followed Fat Bear Week this month, you already know how much people care about watching wild animals do wild things. The gliders of central Victoria will never get a live camera and a bracket, but the same logic applies: protect the habitat and the animals take care of the rest.

A Campaign Measured in Decades

The new parks did not appear because a politician woke up inspired. They came out of a long, slow, very local fight.

Wombat Forestcare started campaigning for stronger protection in 2010. Its members produced ecological reports, surveyed wildlife, and kept making the case to anyone who would listen. “National parks are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation in Australia,” said Gayle Osborne, the group’s convenor, when the legislation passed. She called the decision “a massive step for the protection of the amazing and wonderful plants, animals and fungi that inhabit our forests.”

The campaigners worked alongside the Victorian National Parks Association, the Wilderness Society and local communities for more than two decades in some cases. Their work helped push the state to commission an investigation by the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, an independent body that studies how public land should be used. Its 2021 Central West Investigation Final Report recommended the new parks.

Then came the government’s response, then a bill, the Parks and Public Land Amendment (Central West and Other Matters) Bill. Victoria’s upper house passed it on the evening of November 18, 2025. The parks took legal effect this month, nearly a year later.

There is a lesson in that timeline for anyone who has ever tried to get something done in government. Fifteen years. One investigation. One bill. One proclamation. Persistence beat the calendar.

Not Everyone Wanted This

A fair account of these parks has to include the people who fought against them, because they had real concerns.

When the environmental council first recommended turning the Wombat Forest into a national park, many forest users pushed back hard. In November 2018, roughly 1,500 people marched through the main street of Gisborne, according to the Hepburn Advocate. Horse riders led the march, followed by four-wheel drivers, mountain bikers, prospectors, firewood collectors and campers. Organizer Tim Anderson, a longtime forest campaigner, called the report “simplistic” and said it “rejects both science and our local communities.”

Their worry was straightforward. State forests in Victoria have traditionally allowed a wider range of uses than national parks: collecting firewood, prospecting for gold, riding trail networks, bringing dogs. People who had used the bush that way for generations feared being squeezed into a smaller corner of it. Parks Victoria says walking, camping and exploring will continue, but it also acknowledges that “some activities will change in specific parks and locations,” and it urges visitors to check current rules before they go.

The criticism did not only come from one direction. Conservationists are unhappy that the government will allow recreational deer hunting in parts of Wombat-Lerderderg National Park. Wombat Forestcare says hunting is inappropriate in a national park and will not meaningfully cut deer numbers, noting that Parks Victoria already uses professional shooters for pest control. Hunters, for their part, see it as a reasonable way to keep access and help manage an invasive species that damages native vegetation.

That compromise is a good example of how land decisions actually get made. Almost nobody gets everything they want.

Who Will Run the Parks

Parks Victoria now manages the new parks, and management planning is expected to start within 12 months. The agency says that planning will be done in consultation with Traditional Owners and local communities.

The land lies within the Country of several Aboriginal peoples: the Dja Dja Wurrung, Eastern Maar, Wadawurrung, Wurundjeri, Gunaikurnai and Taungurung. Parks Victoria says their “knowledge, values, goals and priorities will continue to shape the future of these parks.” In Australia, that kind of joint approach to land care has become more common, drawing on tens of thousands of years of experience with fire and forest management.

The bigger context is a shift in how Victoria uses its forests. The state ended commercial native timber harvesting in its state forests at the start of 2024, which opened the door to permanently protecting places like the Wombat Forest instead of logging them. The new parks lock that choice in. Forests that once fed sawmills will now be managed for water, wildlife, recreation and the long, slow work of growing new tree hollows.

Why It Matters Beyond Australia

Americans have their own long tradition here. From Yellowstone onward, the national park idea has been one of the most widely copied concepts in the world. What happened in Victoria this week is that idea still working, more than 150 years later.

Forests also do quiet work for the rest of us. They store carbon, filter water and buffer the swings of weather. As we noted in our piece on the natural forces that shape Earth’s climate, the planet’s systems are bigger than any one country’s politics. A protected forest in central Victoria is a small piece of that larger puzzle, but small pieces add up.

Most of all, this is a reminder that conservation is not only about grand speeches. It is about volunteers in muddy boots, counting owls at night and filling out the paperwork nobody wants to do. Those people just won.