– report by Mike Tomkins

On 23rd March the rock climbing round table participants received meeting notes and a presentation from Parks Victoria, following the fourth round table meeting held on 5th March.

These are the meeting notes prepared by Mark Dingle of Deloitte Australia and approved by Parks Victoria. We note that, unlike formal minutes of meetings, the round table participants have no input into these notes and there is no group approval process.

This is the Gariwerd Assessment Update presentation made by Maria Pizzi, Parks Victoria Director, Managing Country Together. This presentation describes four Projects that are in progress by Parks Victoria in their ongoing efforts to quantify the impact of rock climbing in the Grampians.

• Project 1 – Assessment of climbing areas in the Grampians NP (125 climbing sites)
• Project 2 – Aboriginal rock art site impact assessments in Grampians NP SPAs (72 rock art sites within 28 new Special Protection Areas created in 2019)
• Project 3 – Conservation works at 8 focus areas in the NVR SPA (6 climbing locations and 2 caged art sites)
• Project 4 – Environmental impacts assessment at rock climbing sites (8 climbing sites)

A fifth project was also outlined – a LIDAR survey of the Grampians is proposed at an estimated cost of $400,000. Parks Victoria wishes to “identify priority areas for future cultural surveys.” Light Detection and Ranging imagery is achieved through aerial photography and Parks Victoria has sought this funding to achieve survey resolution down to 2 cm.