17th October, 2006

Regional Plans announcement a mixed bag

The Government has released the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy and Regional Conservation Plan today laying the course for both extensive areas of public land conservation reserve additions and huge biodiversity losses on private land from coastal landclearing.

The announcements centre on three major issues

1. Substantial additions of around 20,000ha to the public reserve estate

2. Planning agreements with three major regional landholders allowing for 10,000 ha of private land to be transferred to the reserve estate,

in exchange for development approval in highly sensitive and controversial bushland areas

3. Almost 4,500 ha of under-reserved or endangered ecosystems will be cleared for housing under the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy including thousands of hectares of high conservation value forests and wetlands.

Hunter Community Environment Centre spokesperson Paul Winn said the Centre was happy to see serious regional conservation deficits finally addressed: “Excluding the Yengo National Park, which is not typical of Lower Hunter ecosystems, the Region has only 20,000 ha of representative National Parks and Reserves. The RCP will double that.

Mr. Winn continued, “late last year the HCEC, in conjunction with other conservation groups, put forward a detailed conservation proposal setting out over 50,000 ha of important wetlands, forests and woodland areas that required protection in the National Park Estate. The RCP satisfied many of these proposals.”

Yet, development areas under the Lower Hunter Strategy, not including the major landholder planning agreements, could see as much as 4,500 ha of vegetation, including wetlands and endangered ecological communities, cleared for housing and industry.

Mr. Winn said that the State Government had failed to prevent broadscale coastal landclearing, and that there would be continued community conflict over high conservation value areas that have been earmarked for development. “Thousands of hectares of vegetation, much of it high conservation value key habitats for endangered plants and animals, are already zoned to be developed in our region. The Draft Lower Hunter Strategy, which was released in January, identified thousands more hectares of vegetation for destruction. Under the final Strategy that loss has doubled. “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.”