Tag Archives: Mornington Peninsula

Save, Protect and Rezone Tootgarook Swamp on the Mornington Peninsula

As the world prepares to celebrate World Wetland Day 2015 in February, the Tootgarook Swamp is facing a very uncertain future  – as a housing development!  It this how our State government’s version of wetland “conservation”?   Housing will see it gone forever!

AWPC wishes to object to the Planning Applications P14/1202 and P14/1901 at 92 Elizabeth Avenue on the following grounds,

In our opinion the Planning application does not meet the requirements of Section 12, of the Mornington Peninsula Planning Scheme which states,

ENVIRONMENTAL AND LANDSCAPE VALUES
Tootgarook swamp is the home of a vast number of animals including 129 bird species, 13 reptillian species, 12 mammals and 9 amphibious frog species (recorded to date).  Due to the lack of proper studies, this number would no doubt increase.

Tootgarook Swamp was once the largest landmark on the southern end of the peninsula stretching almost the whole length between the bay and the ocean. The wetland is made of a special peat soil and used to be home to hundreds of species of native fauna, many now extinct in the area.

It is home to over 120 different bird species, some of which are endangered or threatened. Many are migratory and travel thousands of kilometres to the area to use breeding site and produce new generations of birds.

The Swamp contains many indigenous flora species which no longer readily occur on the peninsula.

A lot of the Tootgarook swamp is zoned as residential and industrial and even worse is the fact that there are development proposals for approximately 80 hectares of it. This makes up almost a quarter of the swamp!

Currently approximately 77 hectares is marked for future development proposals totalling almost a quarter of the entire swamp. After another almost 3 hectares was lost to a housing subdivision infill recently.

Rezoning parts of Tootgarook Swamp for housing development should be rejected.

-Planning should help to protect the health of ecological systems and the biodiversity they support (including ecosystems, habitats, species and genetic diversity) and conserve areas with identified environmental and landscape values.

-Planning must implement environmental principles for ecologically sustainable development that have been established by international and national agreements.  The word “sustainable” far too generic and over-used, and should be replace by the word “stewardship” of ecological and environmental systems, and this “development” is nothing short of a mockery of it!

-Planning should protect sites and features of nature conservation, biodiversity, geological or landscape value.  How can digging up Tootgaroot Swamp protect any ecological features?  Housing is NOT endangered in Victoria, and our real estate Ponzi pyramid is camouflaging our economy’s weaknesses.  We should be promoting real economic prowess, productivity and innovation, not dead-end and destructive housing growth!  The more houses that are built, the more our population will increase – not the converse!

-The application not only fail to address these sections of the State Planning Policy Framework, but completely contradict it.

-It seems that extremely minimal regard has been applied to the sites ecosystem, habitat, species, biodiversity and environmental values. The fact that it makes up an important part of environmental habitat and connectivity of the Tootgarook Swamp which it is part of, landscape value and ecosystem in terms of hunting grounds, breeding grounds, food sources and wildlife refugia during and outside inundation events has not been addressed, nor does the planning application try to conserve any part of these values.  It seems that any wildlife, or habitat, or biodiversity loss is no more than collateral damage, and a mere obstruction to housing profits.

-The Tootgarook Swamp is a key natural feature of the Nepean Peninsula being only one of two natural depressions where fresh groundwater is at the surface, the other being Portsea lagoon.

-The proposed A 99 Planning development site was home to what was classified as state significant vegetation, before being modified and sown with rye grass in 2008.

-Mapping surveys carried out in 2003 by DEPI’s Arthur Rylah Institute in conjunction with the shire council and in 2006 by Practical Ecology have record of the default values of the site and should set the bench mark for appropriate offsets being made. Considering the applicants disregard for the site from 2008, the Council should not be undertaking the method of rewarding developers with permits for land that have been destroyed, or degraded by the developers.

A firm stance should be taken by this shire in order to prevent landholders and developers benefiting from illegal clearing no matter the reason or excuse, as ultimately this reduces the required number of offsets for a site, thus increasing their profitability and can be viewed as a form of fraud.

Significant fauna species that have been recorded within the site and surrounding reserves include:

Australasian Bittern,
120px-Latham's_Snipe

 

 

 

 

Latham’s Snipe, (above)

Common_Greenshank

 

 

 

Common Greenshank, (above)
Marsh_Sandpiper

 

 

 

Marsh Sandpiper,(above)

EasternGreatEgret

 

 

 

 

Eastern Great Egret (above)

Little Egret,
Intermediate Egret,
White footed dunnart,

Swamp_Skink

 

 

 

Swamp Skink (above)
Lewin’s Rail,
Glossy Grass Skink,
Australian Shoveler,
FreckledDuck

 

 

 

Freckled Duck, (above)
Nankeen Night Heron,
Royal_Spoonbill

 

 

 

Royal Spoonbill, (above)
Pacific_Gull

 

 

 

Pacific Gull (above).
The Australasian Bittern an EPBC listed and had been frequently observed and photographed on the applicant’s site this year. With the EPBC migratory (CAMBA, JAMBA, ROKAMBA and Bonn) species Latham’s Snipe, Sharp Tailed Sandpiper, Common Greenshank, and Marsh Sandpiper have been seen utilising the very front of the site.

This also does not include a large list of fauna that is of regional and local significance or uncommon.

As the proposals are situated within an area of high biodiversity value the proposals infill, design, and sitting of buildings fails to minimise the removal and fragmentation of native vegetation.

The greater Tootgarook swamp has been mapped by DEPI (Department of Environment and Primary Industries) as possibly containing Acid Sulphate Soils which could pose a serious problem if disturbed, both to the development and to the adjacent Sanctuary Park Bushland Reserve and Chinamans Creek Reserve as well culvert infrastructure. The boundary soils will be disturbed by any possible retaining wall construction or by heavy machinery used to batter and fill under this proposal.

Please send objection to:
A 99 LOT SUBDIVISION APPLICATION ON TOP OF A LARGE PORTION OF THE TOOTGAROOK SWAMP.

planning.submission@mornpen.vic.gov.au
Mornington Peninsula Shire,

Statutory Planning Department

Private Bag 1000

Rosebud, 3939.

This is not a “development” proposal, but is asking for a permit to vandalize an ecological feature, and biological reserve with destruction.

CommunityRun Petition:Save, Protect and Rezone Tootgarook Swamp on the Mornington Peninsula 

Visit the website SaveTootgarookSwamp

(featured image: Marsh Sandpiper)

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Southern Brown Bandicoot’s declining numbers in south east Victoria

THE federal Department of the Environment earlier this was trying to take the southern brown bandicoot off its threatened species list. However, Federal Environment minister Greg Hunt rejected claims his government doing this. He was responding to an article pub­lished in The Times last month (‘Bandicoot under threat from govt’, The Times 26/1/15).

In 2001 when the species was put on the endangered list, a SBB recovery groups was establish and they were selected as the flagship species in the Western Port Biosphere Reserve, to receive special attention. Hundreds of people, including scientists and government agencies, private consultants and landholders had workshops, and the Victorian government created strategy after strategy to protect them, but nothing worked.

A proposal for habitat corridors for the SBB in the draft Biodiversity Conservation Strategy, released in 2011, was withdrawn by the State Government and revised using consultation. The proposal is that there should be at least two 80m wide corridors leading to reserves to the south and reserves or Green Wedge land to the east – to ensure the sustainability of the species. The former Growling Grass Frog corridor along Clyde Creek should be reinstated.

There is too much of the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy that’s left to the Precinct Structure Planning process, rather than an independent role of a monitor to ensure impartiality.

In March 2014, the Coalition state government removed habitat corridors from its plans to protect the southern brown bandicoot in the southeast. and DEPI and Parks Victoria declared a secret war on Southern Brown Bandicoot ~ April 2014

Once common in the south-east, now, just two viable populations remain in the region – at Royal Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne and in undeveloped parts of Koo Wee Rup at the northern end of Western Port. A third population on Quail Island in Western Port has been decimated by wild pigs released on the island by hunters. The SBB is listed as an important component of the Ecological Character of the Western Port Bay Ramsar site and there is continuity of local populations of bandicoots with areas traversed by the Koo Wee Rup Bypass

Southern_Brown_Bandicoot_Victoria(image: Southern Brown Bandicoot, Cranbourne Vic 1984)

They proposed to conduct regulars fox and cat control programs in the Pines for the protection of this species, knowing very well that SBB’s are not there anymore.(Already costing well over $ 100.000.00) They refuse to install a predator-proof fence around the Pines which is the only realistic way to protect the SBB in the Pines ones re-introduced. (They just want that money)

Ecologist Hans Brunner, from Frankston, has been involved with Southern Brown Bandicoots (SBB) for more than 40 years. He vividly remembers finding SBB all over the Mornington Peninsula, in the Frankston area, and especially in the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve which had the larges and strongest colony in the region. Sadly, they have silently disappeared and in many places they’ve become extinct!

How could this happen?

Local wildlife expert Mr Legg said evidence of SBB populations recovering in a couple of places in Australia was no reason to remove legal protection. He had “reluctantly watched the crash and local extinction of SBB populations across the southeastern suburbs of greater Melbourne and within the Western Port catchment” over the past three decades.

The SBB is facing strong competition from housing growth, and urbanisation. The number of dwellings in Mornington Peninsula Shire is forecast to grow from 84,177 in 2011 to 95,955 in 2026. It’s the housing industry that’s become Victoria’s greatest growth industry, and the urban growth boundary is a slippery concept, that keeps expanding with population growth.

At least $120,000 was spent on fox and cat control, while some SBBs remained. It was unsuccessful. Protecting SBB in the region is a grand failure. What’s needed are large reserves surrounded by predator-proof fences. Some insurance colonies are need, with the rest surviving in the wild.

What’s to be gained by de-listing the SBB? Money will be saved by not having to spend in fox and cat control, and developers will be given more permits to build housing.

Jennifer Cunich, executive director of the Property Council, of course would not endorse any expansion of wildlife corridors. She dismissed any science, and any scheme would be of little benefit. It would be like a brewery recommending an AA group!

The SBB is restricted to remnant and exotic vegetation along drains and road reserves in the project area and surrounding landscape which provides cover from predators.

The VicRoads Bypass alignment intersects habitat for the SBB along the existing Healesville Koo Wee Rup Road to the south of Manks Road and core habitat of the Dalmore Koo Wee Rup Cluster of bandicoots at Railway Road/disused South Gippsland Railway Line and levees of the Bunyip River Drain Complex.

There’s no room for complacency, or sitting back watching decline. What’s needed now is to repopulate the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve, and protect the colonies at Cranbourne Botanic gardens. Australia has the highest mammal extinction rate of the modern world, and any “fauna” reserve and green wedges must have local native species. It’s easy to say there are “plenty” elsewhere, but extinction is a process, not one event, and allowing local extinctions is part of a process that MUST stop!

Screenshot from 2015-05-07 10:44:08

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The Southern Brown Bandicoot Dilemma- Hans Brunner

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The SBB dilemma

For the last 13 years, the nationally endangered Southern Brown Bandicoot has been proclaimed with great hype and expectation as a flagship species in the local biosphere region. They were still prevalent on the Mornington Peninsula and in the Frankston area including the Pines. Sadly, because of incompetence and to a degree of unwillingness by DEPI and Parks Victoria, this species has now become totally extinct on the Pen. and in the Frankston area including the Pines.

The Southern Brown Bandicoot Recovery Group (SBBRG) was also not able to arrest this loss. Their current strategies to just provide corridors for them in order to restore them to where they have been lost has also failed. Wildlife corridors are extremely appealing to most people, but there is very little understanding of the many implications and difficulties involved. For example, what fauna species are still there to use them, is the vegetation type suitable along the whole length of it and can the wildlife to use it be properly protected form dogs, foxes, cats and cars etc. And where would such a linkages come from and lead into. Is it worth to construct expensive infrastructures for the animals that may be left in the area.

In one instance, $20m dollars were spent on underpasses in the Pines for the Southern Brown Bandicoot but there were no bandicoots left to use them.

During a recently held Biolink Forum at the RBGC the great enthusiasm and passion for these links has not changed. The SBBRG still insists to just only relay on providing corridors for bandicoots. Some of the proposed corridors are at least ten km in length and without fences to protect the animals from predators.They recommend to use “functional wildlife corridors between state nature reserves and to wildlife corridors in Frankston from the RBGC” but at the same time believe that fencing of the Pines is a lost cause and time could be better spent on other issues. Why then, create a 10 km long corridor from the RBGC to the Pines and to other similar distant places when there is no intention to re-introduce and properly protect bandicoots in the Pines and in those other reserves? When considering that we have dismally failed to protect bandicoots in at least 12 conservation reserves on the Pen. and in Frankston, it begs the question whether they can realistically be expected to just survive in narrow,long and unprotected corridors.

Fortunately, some people of the Natural Resources Conservation League of Victoria agree with me and recommend “Fencing of key nodes looks likely being one of the immediate priorities. This would include the Pines first and foremost”.

If this type of absolute protection for bandicoots is not accepted, then. the other currently recommended strategies of just corridors will create a much greater threat to bandicoots then that of dogs, foxes, cats, cars and developers put together!

As if it could not get worse. There are suggestions to introduce the Eastern Barred Bandicoot onto Churchill Island, French Island, Woodley School Reserve and even onto Quail Island, all being habitat that should be reserved and used for the SBB’s.

It looks like our flagship species, the SBB is now well and truly torpedoed and sunk and the governments at all levels do not seem to care.

hansbrunner_1

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Vegetation clearing on days of total fire bans and development in guise of reducing fuel load – the public should be concerned — Craig Thomson

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Bearing in mind the recent Crib Point tragedy – a suspected arson attack, with wildlife loss yet to be detailed, one home destroyed and one home damaged plus several sheds destroyed, we must be more vigilant about how and whether we develop our bushland neighbourhoods more densely.

Planning laws allow property owners to remove large amounts of vegetation without permission from their land citing their reason as ‘fire protection’. After the vegetation is removed, those property owners may apply to the council for permission to intensify development on the land.

Council usually does not deny permission for individual cases. But such individual cases mount up and create a danger which councils and planners may not have seen. The risk is that the granting of denser housing development in a bushland area means that, if there is a fire in the remaining bushland, there will be an increased number of residents needing to evacuate. Increasing population density means that more roads are needed to cope with a fire emergency evacuation. However, densification is being allowed to happen in an ad hoc, case by case fashion, without the building of roads in advance of significant development. No one is overseeing the total impact. Vegetation clearing on days of total fire bans

cropped-waterfall

477 Waterfall Gully Rd Rosebud 3939 Vic. Clearing took place on Friday 15/1/16, Monday 18/1/16 and Tuesday 19/1/16 thus far. To date up to 45 trees and shrubs have been removed, including 4 manna gums. One which was a hollow bearing tree and one on a neighbouring property. Most of the other vegetation removed was coast tea-tree.

I called the Mornington Peninsula shire council’s planning department, on the 18th and 19th of January 2016 about the clearing of native vegetation. The officers I spoke to on both days confirmed that there are no permits for either vegetation clearance or an application permit for a building extension/residential development. The planning department said that the vegetation clearance was legal without a permit. The vegetation in question was within 10 meters to the residence or 4 meters within the property boundary.

croppedaerialview

(image: 477 Waterfall Gully Rd, the vegetated block above)

As the primary reason that fire regulations allows for the vegetation clearance, I have raised the following concerns: No 477 Waterfall Gully residence has been unoccupied since November, when it was sold.

That the first action of the owner is to remove all trees and shrubs from site would suggest it is being cleared for a development – an opinion shared by the professionals clearing the vegetation and by the surrounding neighbours.

  1. Two of the three days the vegetation being cleared were days of total fire ban. The 18th and 19th of January were days of total fire bans. The use of multiple heavy industrial petrol operated equipment on days of total fire ban, I believe, makes a mockery of fire prevention laws.

 

  1. The planning department understand my concerns and have been as helpful as they can. However there is nothing they can do to address this issue due to current regulations. So I ask your assistance in addressing flaws in the fire regulations that allow developers to exploit them.

 

  1. These flaws are: To ban activities such as clearing vegetation or activities that could cause fires on days of total fire bans,
    Close loop holes that developers use to clear vegetation under false pretences, which cost the Shire revenue.

 

Craig Thomson, Planning Officer, Australian Wildlife Protection Council

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