Several years ago, DEC was going to bring in a similar regulation that would have required all climbers on DEC-managed land to have written permission to climb in those areas. These areas included: Churchman’s Brook, Mountain and Statham’s Quarries, Mt Cuthbert, Wilyabrup, Peak Head, The Gap, Porongorups, Stirlings, West Cape Howe, Kalbarri, Peak Charles and many other places. Written permission would have been required by each climber for each day and area where they went climbing.

The DEC regulations already required abseiling on DEC-land to abide by these conditions.

Representatives from CAWA met with DEC management and discussed these issues. We pointed out that amongst other things, DEC would have to employ a few people to handle the hundred or so climbing requests per week. We also pointed out that climbers are sometimes required to abseil to either access a climbing area (eg West Cape Howe) or simply to get down or for safety reasons.

It appeared that some in the DEC management did not fully understand what climbing really consisted of and that most climbing is done by individuals (or small groups of individuals) rather than by clients of a commercial enterprise or by ‘dependent participants’ of groups such as Scouts or school groups, who undertake abseiling by itself.

Once we had discussed this issue with the DEC people, they were happy that (most) climbers are responsible and ‘independent participants’ and they dropped the idea of requiring written permission and they also specifically changed their policy so that abseiling in order to get to, or get off a climb, is except from the normal abseiling requirement of requiring written permission.

The DEC people are generally very reasonable but sometimes do not fully understand the requirements and aspects of specific groups (such as climbers) but they are usually very open to input and discussion in order to resolves these types of issues.

Hi Wally

Further to our conversation last night, it looks like ACAQ has put together a response that was submitted yesterday. The deadline is 4 April 2011.

Government departments tend to only recognise submissions from representative bodies. They certainly won’t take any notice of individual submissions of the type suggested on the website you referred to. An unprofessional and aggressive approach is not the way to be heard, even if it comes en masse. Any submission needs to be well structured and present a logical argument.

In order to really impact on the decision making process, the people making the submission need to be liaising with the land managers, trying to get to the bottom of what the real issues are (e.g. fear of liability), finding out what level of understanding the decision makers have of the sport and then presenting a persuasive and compelling argument.

All of this is made harder if there is a limited time frame and the peak body is not aware well in advance of a draft management plan. As I mentioned to you last night, because we have now worked hard to repair and develop the relationship with DEC, we are more likely to find out in advance about any plans which may affect climbers and are on a list to be notified of any draft management plans.

Rather than just responding when there is an immediate problem and sometimes finding out too late to do something about an access issue that will have been in the pipeline for ages, climbing associations should be maintaining regular contact with the land managers so that there can be ongoing negotiations, a better understanding of the sport and at the very least plenty of advance warning of any changes.

Unfortunately, most of the people making the decisions have no knowledge of climbing at all and have many pre-conceived ideas of what the sport involves, which can impact negatively on the decision making process. But what we have found is that many of these people are very open to explanation and education.

I can’t comment on what’s happening in Qld as I’m not sure of the relationship between ACAQ and the land managers. But I do know there are at least a few very proactive people over there who have experience in dealing with government departments and have hopefully had input into the submission.