Climbing ban part of attempt to future-proof national park

Uluru's traditional Aboriginal owners have for years asked visitors not to climb it. Photo / Supplied

CANBERRA - Plans to ban the climbing of Uluru in Australia will be followed by a raft of other measures to ensure its protection from the evils of the 21st century.

The national parks service said it wanted to protect the World Heritage Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park of pollution and erosion, feral animals, climate change and the sheer crush of its popularity.

These include restrictions on the routes aircraft may take over the 1300sq km park, bans on overnight camping, walking or cycling off established paths, and flying machines including hang-gliders and hot air balloons.

New measures are planned to protect plant, bird, mammal and reptile species, some endangered or vulnerable, from the extinctions that have already happened to others.

Introduced pests such as buffel grass, camels, dogs and foxes threaten native species, and have tracked in new problems and polluted or choked water supplies.

The park is bracing for climate change and predictions of hotter temperatures, long runs of days of more than 35C, and higher evaporation that will affect everything from biodiversity to the safety of visitors.

"The traditional owners of Uluru, who have majority representation on the [park management] board, agree that we are at a major crossroads," Director of National Parks Peter Cochrane said.

"We are confronting the impacts of climate change and invasive species.

"We also need to think beyond the global economic crisis to longer-term travel patterns: who are our next generation of visitors? What experiences are they seeking and what can we offer them?"

They key to Uluru's future lies in its ownership. The rock and the surrounding land were handed back to its traditional owners by the federal Labor Government in 1985 in return for leasing it back as a national park.

The local Pitjantatjara and Yankunytjatjara-speaking owners are part of the wider Anangu people of the Western Desert region, a vast, 600,000sq km expanse embracing four deserts and large tracts of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia.

The park is their sacred territory: not only the great sandstone bulk of Uluru, but also the associated 36 basalt and granite composite domes of Kata Tjuta and the surrounding dunes and sandplains.

Modern geology says Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, and Kata Tjuta were thrust up by earth movements and exposed by erosion; Anangu believe they were formed during creation by ancestral beings who left the land and its spirituality to their care.

This responsibility is bound in Tjukurpa, traditional law that governs Anangu life, including secret knowledge, sacred places and relics, and the ancient tracks leading to them.

Uluru is central to these beliefs. For years Anangu have explained its significance to visitors and asked them not to climb the monolith.

"That's a really important sacred thing that you are climbing," Kunmanara, one of the traditional owners says in the plan. "You shouldn't climb. It's not the real thing about this place. The real thing is listening to everything."

Another traditional owner, Vince Forrester, more bluntly told ABC radio: "You can't go climb on the top of the Vatican, you can't go climb on the top of the Buddhist temples, and so on and so forth."