Community & Business
6 November, 2024
Plea to protect treasured areas
CONCERNED Tablelands citizens have made it clear they want their council to do much better to value and protect the environment they treasure from being destroyed by developers.
A deputation to Tablelands Regional Council last week by Malanda school teacher and resident Samantha Willis outlined the concerns of “many people” over the de-greening of the area including the destruction of a swathe of forest near Malanda to accommodate a new 140-lot subdivision and access roads into the residential area.
Mrs Willis told the meeting that in “a matter of days and without any public consultation”, the vegetation along Davies Road was bulldozed, replaced by two access roads which she claimed were much wider than was necessary to carry local traffic.
Mrs Willis said she had taken world-renowned naturalist and champion for the environment, David Attenborough, to that very part of the forest to see his first Lumholtz’s Tree Kangaroo some years ago, adding that it was also home to many other species of wildlife and birds.
The destruction of the forest had left residents “distressed and disturbed” as they watched the “trees being hacked to bits and a great mess left there for residents to see”.
This was the catalyst for seeking the deputation to council, but Mrs Willis said that over the past 16 years she had lived in the Malanda area, there had been a big growth in urban development and population and, as a consequence, “a steady de-greening of the area”.
“Much of this seems to have happened without a sustainable local area planning framework leading to a loss of natural environments, unsuitable development design and location, and growth without the necessary infrastructure and greenspace,” she told the councillors.
She said forest areas were being regarded by council as “scrub and therefore not valued”.
“Council needs to locally map these patches of forest and place a value on them so when developers apply for development applications these areas are taken into account and protected or offsets/replacements are negotiated,” she said.
After the meeting, Adjunct Professor Peter Valentine, who has spent much of the past 40 years studying wildlife in the region, was critical of how council “seems to facilitate big profits for developers without any return to the community and, indeed, leaves everybody else worse off”.
He said issues like road standards for a highway being applied to a “tiny connecting link road between two small residential streets that don’t go anywhere except to houses” made no sense and caused an unnecessary loss of trees and wildlife habitat.
“There are many other examples of such destructive activity including in Kairi and elsewhere in Malanda. And despite all this aggressive destruction of nature, no greenspace is required from the developers in the development - no public parks, no footpath connections, no bikeway to town and so on,” Prof Valentine said.
“The hope is this must change for the better for the community....not just making developers millionaires.”
During her deputation to council, Mrs Willis called for council to work towards more sustainable policies, decision making and practices to better reflect modern community values.
She also suggested council engage with external organisations to keep abreast of latest environmental conservation measures; tap into funds and grants available for environmental conservation; make use of the many local residents with expertise in conservation and environmental management to give support to council; and to engage and work alongside locals to make community decisions more transparent as “residents have had enough of finding out after the event”.
“Protect our precious natural and social environments for a sustainable future for all,” Mrs Willis said.
“I must stress that this presentation was the initiative of several Malanda locals but it speaks on behalf of many Tablelands residents who are very concerned for our environment and wish to be assured that future planning does not continue to threaten or destroy what we have and treasure.”
