17 August 2016
Georges River councils warn Premier Baird’s biodiversity laws will make species extinctions more likely
Georges River Combined Councils Committee Inc. (GRCCC) has made a damning appraisal of the Baird government’s proposed new biodiversity and tree-clearing laws, which will see the repeal of local council Tree Preservation Orders.
The GRCCC is a regional grouping of eight councils of the Georges River catchment in south and south western Sydney, including Bankstown, Campbelltown, Fairfield, Hurstville, Kogarah, Liverpool, Rockdale, Sutherland Shire and Wollondilly Shire councils.
The organisation has warned in its submission to the government review that the reforms would be bad for wildlife, and add administrative burdens and costs to local government.
Key concerns raised in the GRCCC submission
- “The reforms exacerbate the likelihood of extinctions of threatened species because the reforms provide for allowable activities enabling the incidental clearing for routine rural land management under voluntary Codes of Practice and the new act is unlikely to slow the rate of the biodiversity loss.”
- “Vulnerable ecological communities and locally threatened species are no longer recognised or protected under the reforms.”
- “We are concerned with the likely net loss in biodiversity.”
- “Vegetation in urban areas not only has high biodiversity values, it has strong amenity value and is critical in reducing impact of heat islands.”
- “… biodiversity assessment is only triggered when land to be cleared is greater than 0.5ha and this is considered significantly too high given that there are a few urban sites that contain 0.5ha of vegetation left. However, the smaller pockets of vegetation have high biodiversity value in their role of creating biodiversity corridors and supplementary habitat.”
- “Planning in NSW is running the danger of not only losing most urban bushland, but also intact vegetation on the urban fringe.”
See GRCC’s full submission here https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/natureorg/pages/144/attachments/original/1469600794/GRCCC_Biodiversity_reforms_submission.pdf?1469600794
Nature Conservation Council CEO Kate Smolski said: “Nobody supports Mike Baird’s deeply flawed package – not the scientists, not the conservationists, and not GRCC, which see clearly that these laws threaten native plants and animals across Sydney’s suburbs.
“Mr Baird should scrap this flawed package of laws and either fund Local Land Services to make the Native Vegetation Act works as it was intended, or go back to the drawing board and come up with another way to provide workable, strong protections for nature in NSW.
“From the very beginning, the government’s decision to scrap the Native Vegetation Act and Threatened Species Conservation Act was a political fix designed to appease the more extreme elements in the agricultural community.
“The laws the government has proposed will further the short-term interests of big agribusiness and property developers, not the communities and wildlife in the southern Sydney region that depend on healthy soils, waterways and bushland for their long-term survival.”
The Baird government is now reviewing more than 7000 submissions it received in response to its proposed package. It has committed to introducing legislation to parliament in October.
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Forests and wildlife
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