ABSTRACT
Getting to the top of the mountain in Girraween National Park in Queensland, Australia, is quite a scramble, but the reward is the chance to stand beside a magnificent 10m-high boulder, perfectly balanced in equilibrium on a tiny point of rock. The three of us went there about the time that the long process of research, which has culminated in this book, began.We walked through the forests and among the scattering of gigantic boulders arranged higgledy-piggledy across the landscape, camped out and ate a memorable meal in one of the local vineyards. And maybe it is stretching the point a little, but the balanced rock could also stand as a metaphor for some of the things that underlie this book. The world’s protected area system is itself a massive effort to maintain equilibrium: of ecosystems, of people, even of climate and, in another way, of keeping a balance between the various demands and pressures that continue to assail natural ecosystems. The project that we imagined was going to be a short and rather simple collection of good news stories about protected areas has developed into something altogether more difficult and complex. In many ways we found more benefits – more arguments for protection – than we had expected but at the same time we came to realize that the challenges of management for multiple values is often greater than we had first thought.
