Page 2852 - Week 10 - Thursday, 7 October 2021
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for Canberra’s future. The ACT planning strategy guides how Canberra will grow and change into the future.
It sets a clear and compelling vision for Canberra:
To be a sustainable, competitive and equitable city that respects Canberra’s unique legacy as a city in the landscape and the national capital, while being responsive to the future and resilient to change.
One of the strategic directions of the ACT planning strategy is to “protect biodiversity and enhance habitat connectivity to improve landscape resilience”. This is an overarching goal that is a core principle of the ACT government strategic planning directions for the territory. Biodiversity and protection of threatened species are important elements of our planning. The ACT planning strategy also has two specific actions that the ACT government endorsed. The first is to “identify and establish environmental offset areas within planning processes to mitigate any unavoidable impacts of development on ecosystems and biodiversity of national significance and other protected matters”.
I am happy to report that the environmental offsets program has been up and running for quite some time. The Labor government has funded 22 offset sites across the ACT in the last 10 years. This has assisted the conservation of threatened species across more than 2,300 hectares. Of these sites, 14 have been included in nature reserves. This has resulted in the protection, in perpetuity, of threatened species and communities including the superb parrot, golden sun moth, pink-tailed worm-lizard, grassland earless dragon, button wrinklewort, natural temperate grasslands and box gum grassy woodland.
The second related action is to “incorporate consideration of natural habitat and conservation areas into urban planning and design processes to promote habitat connectivity and support the establishment of biodiversity refuges”. Taking environmental considerations into account at the earliest stages of the planning process for urban areas means that we can protect our most significant areas and species. This is done through strategic assessments. Three such assessments have been part of the planning processes for Gungahlin, the Molonglo Valley and west Belconnen. Strategic assessments are rigorous considerations of potential environmental impacts. They have involved both assessment and approval under the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999—the EPBC Act. They have resulted in the identification of land for biodiversity protection.
This has involved giving statutory effect to add a nature reserve overlay over the areas needing protection. For example, Territory Plan variation 379 establishes a 160-hectare nature reserve, called Nadjung Mada, at Kenny. Nadjung Mada includes conservation of natural temperate grassland and box gum grassy woodland. It is also protecting nationally threatened communities and important habitat for the superb parrot, golden sun moth and grassland earless dragon. A key feature of this reserve is its mature, hollow-bearing trees. A similar process occurred last year for the
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