The Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute has just hosted a highly successful six day training program on the management of natural resources in protected areas in the Asia-Pacific region.
Course participants travelled from India, Bhutan, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and from several states around Australia to attend.
Throughout the course, participants worked in teams across the four themes of fire, water, flora/fauna and people/culture with the aim of finding ways to adapt to uncertainty when working with complex environmental issues such as climate change in protected areas.
Participants met with many local people engaged with protection of the World Heritage Area including local Indigenous representatives of the Gundungurra and Dharug Tribal Nations and members of the Blue Mountains branch of National Parks and Blue Mountains City Council.
This program was made possible as the result of a partnership with the Protected Areas Learning & Research Collaboration (PALRC) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).
Training scholarships were provided by PARLC and by the IUCN/ICCR0M World Heritage Leadership program which enabled nine international participants to attend.
A further ten participants attended from state (Tasmanian Parks, Parks Victoria and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) and federal government agencies (Federal Department of Environment & Energy).
Enquires about the course can be directed to Dr Rosalie Chapple.