Georgina Woods, Hunter Community Environment Centre

October, 2006

The release yesterday of the final Lower Hunter Regional Strategy and Draft Regional Conservation Plan exemplifies the ongoing ambivalence of this State Government towards biodiversity conservation and the environment in general. The addition of 20,000 hectares of public land to the reserve estate is very welcome, and the role of the Premier in this gain is heartening. Our serious conservation deficit for the survival of habitats and ecosystems has begun to be addressed. At the same time, the Regional Strategy has foreshadowed loss to coastal landclearing of a further 4,500 hectares of vegetation, much of it high conservation value and critical to the region’s future.

The essential problem that the State Government must address is uncontrolled loss of coastal vegetation, especially ecological communities not represented on public land. No law in this State protects high conservation value remnant vegetation from mining or urban development. While the addition of State Forests and Crown Reserves to the National Parks estate will secure their ecological values for the future, other areas, with perhaps even more significant values have been left out of the Park declaration. In Lake Macquarie, for example, Labor member Jeff Hunter pushed hard to protect Crown land at Awaba that is seriously threatened by mining and residential encroachment. It hasn’t been included, and surely this must be partly attributable to other more powerful members of the Government who are contemptuous of the environment and the community, and who openly support unrestricted mining and housing sprawl.

In the Lower Hunter Strategy, development and conservation trade-offs proposed for the Gwanalan area are a perfect example of the refusal of the Labor Government to control coastal landclearing. The area is recognised as the main stronghold in Australia for the nationally threatened Squirrel Glider. There are around 3,000 gliders in the open forests of southern Lake Macquarie and north Wyong -- the highest concentration of them anywhere in the world. Yesterday, the Government announced that about half of the land owned by Coal and Allied at Gwanadalan will be cleared for housing under the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy, in order that the other half can be protected.

In January, when the Draft Strategy was released for public comment, environmentalists expressed concern about four main areas earmarked for development, at Morriset, West Wallsend, North Raymond Terrace and Thornton. At the same time, large landholders like Hardie Holdings and Rosecorp, who were disappointed that environmentally sensitive lands that they owned were not nominated as development sites, began lobbying for their inclusion. Nine months later, none of the ecologically sensitive areas objected to by environmentalists have been removed from the final Strategy, and Rosecorp and Hardie Holdings will together now be given permission to build high-impact residential subdivisions at Gwandalan, Catherine Hill Bay and North Rothbury.

Biodiversity is important for its own sake, but also for ours. Loss of biodiversity and potential ecosystem collapse means loss of soil structure, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, water purification and catchment benefits and other ecosystem services. It also means loss of complexity and genetic diversity that we won’t be able to retrieve.

Thanks to the Regional Strategy and to existing urban zonings, around 10,000 ha of bushland and wetland will be cleared in the Lower Hunter for housing and industry in the next 25 years. That amounts to 400 hectares -- or 800 football fields -- every year for the next 25 years in just five local government areas. That is barely better than the historical rate of clearing in the region, but there is not guarantee in the Strategy that further areas will not be cleared.

It’s a great relief that the mountains behind Lake Macquarie, the Tomago sandbed forests and wetlands around Port Stephens will finally be afforded secure protection for the future. But on the subject of private land conservation, the State Government has to do better if it’s going to secure threatened species populations in this region, and if it wants to secure the support of environmentalists at the coming election.