Inside Word… with Bradley Fauteux

Bradley Fauteux is the newly appointed Chief Executive of Parks Victoria, which manages more than four million hectares of parks and waterways across the state. He was previously the Managing Director of Ontario Parks at the Ministry of Natural Resources where he was responsible for leading one of the largest parks systems in the world. Here, he gives us his Inside Word on Victoria’s natural wonders…

What was it about Victoria – and its parks – that made you decide to pack up your home and family and move to the other side of the world? The remarkable thing about Victoria is that for an area that’s really not that large, it is incredibly diverse in its different forms of geography, landscapes and biodiversity.

I don’t think there’s a place in the world that has such a broad offering of outdoor experiences and types of nature. That more than anything was what attracted us here.

How do our parks differ from others across the world?Parks are actually pretty similar – you’ll always have differences of flora, fauna biodiversity and landscape, but I think what really differs for us is the diversity across the parks estate. We’ve got an alpine region with snow, we’ve got desert regions with huge sand dunes, we’ve got the remarkable southern coast with places like Wilsons Promontory and the 12 Apostles.

We’re literally a place where you can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. I think the biodiversity and the remarkable landform diversity is what makes us stand out.

What do you think it’s Victoria’s greatest natural asset? The incredible range of plants and animals that are only found here, the remarkable range of iconic destinations and sights that you can see, and really the incredible range of experiences you can have on the landscape are its greatest advantage.

Since you’ve arrived, what hidden gems have you discovered in Victoria’s backyard?Probably for me it’s been the Southern Coast- as much as I’m excited about the forest environments and the alpine environments, the biodiversity under the water on the Southern Coast might be second to none in the whole world.

Yet its largely undiscovered and not really promoted, so I’m really excited to think about the two bays and the Southern coast in a very purposeful way.

What do you think are the main benefits of spending time in nature?For me the main benefits of spending time in nature really are your health and wellbeing as individuals. There’s just a huge amount of research that indicates the more time that we spend outdoors in nature the lower our levels of stress will be, the lower our blood pressure will be, and the lower our rates of heart disease will be. It truly is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

What are some of the plans you have for Victoria’s 4.2 million hectares of parks and waterways?I want them to be climate change resilient; we need to think about how we do park management, what do we revegetate with, how do we think about our wetlands and water courses.

I think we need to have visitation, we need as many people as possible out in our parks- I think visitation leads to conservation outcomes. One of the great keys for this particular park system is to be very mindful of all the differences across the state and to promote those differences both as tourism destinations and as community-based assets.