An expanded World Heritage Area would become Tasmania's tourism backbone, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today in Hobart.

"This is Tasmania's globally-celebrated asset, it is what sets us especially apart and it offers us huge future economic and employment rewards," Senator Brown said.

"Our existing World Heritage Area already generates over $200 million of annual income for Tasmania and more than 5000 jobs. An enlarged World Heritage Area would extend those benefits to towns such as Waratah, Poatina, Deloraine, Dover, Maydena, Westerway, Judbury and Tarraleah."

Senator Brown was speaking at the launch of a report prepared by conservationist Geoff Law that proposes extending the WHA to include the Tarkine, Mt Field National Park, Melaleuca, the Great Western Tiers, forests in the Styx, Weld and Florentine valleys, and tracts of the Southwest Conservation Area.

Tasmania's WHA was listed at the height of the controversy over damming the Franklin River in 1982. The listed area was expanded to include the Central Plateau, Denison River valley and eastern portion of Macquarie Harbour after the Labor-Green accord was signed in 1989. This proposal is to complete the nomination of land of world heritage value.

"About 85% of these spectacular areas are already reserved. World Heritage status will enable Tasmania to get more federal funding for better management of their outstanding values," Senator Brown said.

"Many of the areas are suffering from government neglect, underfunding or destructive exploitation. This includes logging oldgrowth forests; the ill-conceived Tarkine loop road; vandalism of Aboriginal cultural heritage; arson; and poaching threatened species such as the world's largest freshwater crayfish.

"The tenure of these areas should allow for Aboriginal co-management where appropriate, and areas of particular historical and cultural significance to Traditional Owners should be under their direct ownership and control."

The proposal does not include any shacks, operating mines, or private land (unless the landowner has already agreed). It would create at least five new gateways to the WHA at Murchison Hwy, Anthony Hwy, Lake Dobson (Mt Field) Rd, Poatina Rd and Savage River Rd.

Western Tasmania: A place of outstanding universal value

The Western Tasmania: A Place of outstanding universal value report identifies World Heritage values outside the existing Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) that include:
• stunning high-altitude glaciated landscapes;
• Australia's largest and most diverse temperate rainforests;
• stands of the tallest hardwood forests on Earth;
• spectacular caves at Mole Creek and in the Florentine valley;
• cliffs, islets, beaches, headlands, lagoons and huge Aboriginal shell middens on one of the world's great wild coasts;
• caves where Aboriginal ice-age hunters lived over 30,000 years ago;
• great tracts of moorland; and
• the habitats of rare and threatened species such as the Tasmanian devil, wedge-tailed eagle, spotted-tail quoll and a host of invertebrates of ancient ancestry.

The 806,000 ha proposed as extensions to the World Heritage Area include:
• 629,000 ha of existing formal conservation reserves (78% of proposed extensions);
• 53,000 ha of existing informal reserves (7% of proposed extensions);
• An additional 124,000 ha of public land, mostly State Forest (15% of proposed extensions).

Another 55,000 ha of formal reserve and State Forest is proposed as buffer zones.

Statement of Aboriginal ownership of lands proposed as World Heritage

The public lands identified as World Heritage extensions have outstanding natural and/or Aboriginal cultural values and should be protected and managed in cooperation with the areas' Traditional Owners to conserve those values forever. The status of protection should be commensurate with IUCN categories 1 or 2 such as a national park.

Aboriginal Tasmanians were dispossessed of these lands and now seek their return and to exercise their role as traditional custodians of the cultural heritage of the area. The State should develop new protected areas in these lands through negotiation with the Aboriginal traditional owners and in accordance with their rights and responsibilities. Adequate funding to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community is necessary to achieve proper management and protection of Aboriginal heritage.

The tenure of these areas should allow for co-management where appropriate, and areas of particular historical and cultural significance to the Traditional Owners should be under their direct ownership and control.