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ps9.6bfme 80Blacktown Council has pledged to exceed a recommendation by ecologists who assessed the site in 2007 that they plant two trees around the perimeter of the field for every one cut down.
The council will plant 750 trees of a canopy cover species and
13,750 other plants. These will be made up of medium-sized
trees, ground covers and native grass.
``All plants are native Cumberland Plain species endemic to
the region,'' a council spokesman said. Leg 1
tagByline1< p>By bbJade Wittmann
TREE-CLEARING will resume at Foreman Avenue, Glenwood, today.
Less than a week after the
NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and
Water found Blacktown Council had the legal right to
remove the trees without referring the matter to the
department, its federal counterpart followed suit.
Blacktown and District Environmental Group secretary Wayne Olling emailed the federal government's Department of Environment Water Heritage and the Arts to ask whether the council should have referred the matter to the department.
The response was that the
patch of critically endangered Cumberland
Plain woodland in question did not entirely meet one of
the listing's condition thresholds because less than a
third of the perennial understorey vegetation was made
up of native species.
The department said that for this reason, the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act
legislation to protect and manage nationally important
ecological communities did not apply.
The department acknowledged residents' concerns
but said it had drawn on advice from the NSW department which sent two officers to inspect the site and was unable to intervene.
Mr Olling said the flora and fauna survey of the Cumberland Plain woodland remnants at Foreman Avenue
commissioned in 2007 was valid for only six months and
did not list some species that were present at the site.
He said a new species assessment should have been
completed.
A Blacktown Council spokesman said a statement
of environmental effects was completed in June 2009 and while it did not replace the
flora and fauna study it reviewed and drew from it.
``The [statement] found that there is not likely to be
any significant effect on any endangered ecological community, threatened species or their habitats,'' the
spokesman said.
Mr Olling said before the Cumberland Plain woodland
was listed as critically endangered in December
2009 it was not uncommon for the federal department to
approve development on patches of up to 30 hectares
of woodland. ``The sad thing is we know that most of the Cumberland Plain woodland is small remnants of less than five hectares,'' he said.
``They should be developing a new attitude.''
Residents won some concessions.
The council will ask Featherdale Wildlife Park and WIRES
experts to help move fauna. It also resolved that ``the listing of additional car parking in Glenwood Reserve allocated for future funding in the Works
Improvement Program be brought back to the council for
further urgent consideration''.
Glenwood resident Bob McKay said he was pleased
with the concessions but afraid that the funding for the
car park may come at the expense of some of the tree
replanting.
``I think they are just trying to placate us,'' he said.
``I'm not happy that the trees are going. What the council should do is stop the development until they have significant funding for not only the field and the car
park, but to make sure that everything is done properly,
not in a piecemeal fashion.''
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