The document examines the amount of open space land available for public outdoor recreation in SE Queensland from 2001 through to projections in 2026.
As SEQ’s population grows, utilisation pressure on existing outdoor recreation space increases and existing sites (many unofficial) may be lost to alternative land uses (e.g. urban development, as has been the pattern for the past few decades). Population growth in SEQ is not uniform and the majority of the population growth is expected to occur in the southern half of the region, an area that already has lower levels of accessible open space per capita. Comprehensive data on public outdoor recreation space (State and local government land) is not available. However, using state and local government owned and accessible open space (e.g. reserves, forests etc) as a proxy indicates only 32% of the 460,000 ha of accessible open space in SEQ is in the southern regions of SEQ, while that region accounts for 57% of the population.
Without future investment in public space for outdoor recreation, the area per capita (ha/person) is likely to decline sharply over the next 20 years, potentially reducing access to and diversity of outdoor recreation opportunities and experiences. To maintain current per capita areas would require acquisitions of around 184,000 ha over the next 20 years (9,200 ha/year), but this would still result in significant differences between the northern and southern regions of SEQ. To achieve comparable per-capita areas in the southern region of SEQ would require additional acquisitions of 387,000 ha in that region.