The Romeo Lahey Memorial Lecture honours the principal 1930 founder of the National Parks Association of Queensland (NPAQ). Romeo who remained NPAQ President for more than 30 years and was instrumental in convincing the Queensland Government to declare many of the national parks gazetted up to the 1970s. In 1933, Romeo was also co-founder of Binna Burra Lodge.

NPAQ hosted the Romeo Lahey Memorial Lecture on 12 November 2022 in the Brisbane City Hall, the same venue used in 1930 when the organisation was first formed. The speaker was Dr. Marc Hockings, Emeritus Professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Queensland. Marc is a long-term member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) through its World Commission on Protected Areas, Species Survival Commission and Commission on Ecosystem Management. He initiated and is leading the IUCN WCPA work on the Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas. His presentation was titled ‘Quality counts – making protected areas effective, equitable and successful’, and he addressed the role of IUCN’s Green List of Protected Areas in encouraging and measuring National Parks to reach good standards of management and what Australia and Queensland’s National Parks need to do to achieve the internationally acceptable standard.

Marc’s presentation can be seen at https://npaq.org.au/RL2022/

On 14 January 2023, with the sponsorship of Griffith University, NPAQ will join with Binna Burra Lodge to host a half day ‘Families for the Forests’ celebration at Mt Roberts. https://npaq.org.au/f4f/

Maintaining the almost century long linkages between the two organisations, Binna Burra Lodge Chair, Steve Noakes, is current Vice President of the NPAQ.