Three new National Parks for Central West Victoria - but the work continues to protect our forests.
The central West of Victoria gained three new National Parks in 2025, the result of more than 15 years of advocacy, campaigning, scientific surveying and legal action by Wombat Forestcare, the Victorian National Parks Association, the Bendigo & District Environment Council and Ballarat Environment Network.
Gayle Osborne, of Wombat Forestcare, says the three parks represent a great win for conservation and the protection of threatened species such as Greater Gliders and Powerful Owls, but the work is far from over.
As well as the new national parks and two conservation parks under the National Parks Act, there are also meant to be seven additional regional parks, 11 nature conservation reserves and 18 bushland reserves across the central west of Victoria.
The regional parks, nature conservation and bushland reserves are still waiting to be legislated, and most of these areas remain in state forests, which means they are still being used for their resources such as firewood collection, and still undergoing mining exploration.
“Most people thought once we got the national parks, that was it. They didn’t look at the maps, they didn’t think of it. But we have to keep people aware of these risks,” Gayle says.
Mining exploration is currently happening in Wombat State Forest near Trentham, in an area that had previously been mined for gold. With new technology these areas are being revisited. Another risk is stealth logging, which is logging inside national parks and other parks, disguised as “salvage” logging, or labelled as a “fire risk operation”. There is no oversight or scientific support for what is a fire risk, no independent body to say whether the proposed logging is actually going to reduce fire risk. Destructive operations continue until the designation for the regional parks and reserves goes into effect.
“We've had this win of stopping native forest logging, but it’s very easy to reintroduce it statewide. That’s whats been so incredibly disappointing, to not get the Great Forest National Park, or the parks in Gipplsand. The logging industry is just waiting for a change of government.”
Osborne was one of 20 to 30 co-founders of Wombat Forestcare in the early 2000s, when concerned locals got together to try to stop the logging in Wombat forest. At the time, under then-premier Steve Bracks, there was a program called “community forestry”, where the community and loggers were intended to decide together how the forest would be logged. This failed policy was actually an opportunity for the community to push for a review of the sawlog resources of the forest. The review found that there was not enough timber remaining to keep the local sawmill operating. So the local sawmill owner took a state government pay-out package, and closed the mill.
“Out of that win,” Gayle says, “we grew as an organisation, and we realised the work that was ahead of us.”
“We were very lucky, the group had a lot of skills — a filmmaker, a photographer, a graphic designer, an author of native plant books with an extensive knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystem function. Fungi expert, Dr Alison Pouliot wrote for our newsletter for many years. It’s been a lot of people working very hard for a long time.”
Fast forward a couple of decades, and legislation creating the Wombat-Lerderderg, Mt Buangor and Pyrenees national parks as well as the Hepburn and Cobaw conservation parks passed the Victorian Parliament on November 18, 2025. The legislation also included the addition of Wellsford Forest to Bendigo Regional Park.
HOW IT HAPPENED:
Wombat Forestcare and others campaigned for a Victorian Environment Assessment Council (VEAC) investigation into the Wombat/Macedon area, Mt Cole/Pyrenees area and the Wellsford Forest in Bendigo.
In March 2017, the Hon Lily D’Ambrosio, the then-Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change (DEECA), requested that VEAC undertake a Central West Investigation into these areas of public land.
A draft proposal paper was published in August 2018.
The final report on VEAC’s Central West Investigation was publicly released on 21 June 2019.
The Victorian Government response to the recommendations was tabled in Parliament on 24 June 2021.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PUT PRESSURE ON THE STATE GOVERNMENT TO FULFIL ITS PROMISE TO PROTECT THE REMAINING FOREST AREAS:
Write a letter to your local members, in both the legislative assembly and the legislative council, cc the Minister for the Environment, and the Premier. Voice your concern about unscientific planned burns, or so-called “salvage” logging, or whatever is happening in the forest that you care about.
Support the work of the Victorian Forest Alliance.
Read more on the Victorian National Parks Association website.
Read more on the Wombat Forestcare website.
Pictures by Sandy Scheltema and Wombat Forestcare.