Middle Head / Gubbuh Gubbuh Environment Education Centre

PUBLIC MEETING – 21 FEBRUARY 2024

Transcript: Dr David Robertson, Director of Cumberland Ecology, Chair of the Mosman Environmental Foundation

View Dr David Roberston LinkedIn profile >

Thank you. I hope to add to some of the information presented in the really good talks before me and bring out a few points from my area because I'm a consultant ecologist. I study plants and animals.  

I've had an opportunity to look at the site. I've visited it. I've also had an opportunity to use some of the mapping tools that we've got available to us as ecologists and looked at some of the flora and fauna values of the site.

So, I've got a very brief presentation tonight to give you my views about what has been done, what's been presented to you to date, and what can be done to take further steps to look into this.   

You can see (ABOVE) that the COLA is highlighted here in orange, and the surrounding area is cross-hatched in green and yellow stripes. And that's for the asset protection zone. In an asset protection zone almost all of the vegetation has to be cleared. They can leave a shrub or two, but it's entirely cleared for all intents and purposes.

That would be the impact of that development. But I want to look more closely at the implications of that. In 2016, in New South Wales, new legislation was brought in called the Biodiversity Conservation Act, which at its core has a theme. It's a hierarchy of assessments you must go through when developing a proposal to build in a natural or semi-natural environment. And it basically says that you should first consider avoiding the impacts of the development to begin with. You need to see if you can design a development that doesn't need to have an environmental impact. Can you do that? That's the first thing built into the legislation. So that's the Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Then, it says you must consider the opportunities to mitigate that impact. Is there anything else you can do to soften any edge effects or impacts on native flora and fauna? It requires that you look at the vegetation types, whether or not the vegetation is endangered or unusual, and whether or not there are threatened plant and animal species that live within it that could be impacted.

And finally, when all else is said and done, and you elect to have a development in that location, and you can't avoid it, or you don't think it's worthwhile avoiding it, then you can create what's called offsets to offset the impact of it. The notions of going through that process are important because if you're developing a site that's zoned for residential development or for some other type of development, that may well be a good idea to press for a certain level of development. 

But first and foremost, we need to remember that this is right in the heart of the city and in the Harbour National Park. So it's a National Park that was gazetted in 1975. It's there expressly for the purposes of conservation. The avoid, mitigate and offset hierarchy is important to consider in the context of a National Park.  

I've circled the area (ABOVE) that could be affected by this development. Just roughly speaking, the COLA would go into an area like this. And if you look at this little triangle of vegetation here you may have noticed that that was vegetation that appeared in some of the early photographs dating back to the 1930s.

Kate talked about the feedback that we got about this vegetation being really disturbed and said that it's not of great value. The vegetation there has been around in a relatively intact state since well before the 1930s, by the looks of things. 

I'll talk more about the type of vegetation. Still, in looking at this aerial photograph, the only thing I want you to notice is that you've got an array of other buildings that are present on this historic site. Other buildings, tracks, and roads ramify out through the bushland of the National Park. So there's a lot of other scope for other considerations in the future if people start to opt for the easy way out of clearing bushland within the National Park. 

This is a development that might have, in some people's eyes, a small environmental impact by removing some bushland, but it sets the scene for other things to happen in the future as Sydney grows. And there is a lot of pressure to look out for sites like this and other sites in the future. 

Every different vegetation type in New South Wales has been classified and there's a database of information about it called BioNet. The vegetation in the area that we're looking at [Middle Head Fort], is a type of coastal heathland vegetation that typically develops on sandstone sites and relatively infertile soils. And you can see that a reasonable amount of it has been mapped on and around the National Park, and around the site

It's known as Sydney Coastal Foreshores Forest, a relatively low forest affected by coastal winds, salt spray, etc. Some threatened species are known within it. Some of those threatened species are plants that have been planted back into that community to reintroduce some threatened species' biodiversity into that area. There are also threatened animals that use that as a foraging habitat. If you overlay the development footprint of the building and the asset protection zone, you'll see a lot of this coastal sandstone vegetation has to be cleared around the building. 

The other thing that I see immediately in looking at this site is that there are a lot of grassland areas as well that don't have vegetation constraints, but they do have historical constraints. When I started to put together this presentation tonight one of the things I ended up with was I realised that to properly criticise and evaluate what is being proposed there needs to be a thorough biodiversity assessment report. 

A biodiversity assessment report is a requirement of the Biodiversity Conservation Act. I have been sent a copy of the report this afternoon. I haven't had a chance to look thoroughly through that report. A detailed report that covers this site, and it addresses some aspects of the legal requirements for assessment under the state legislation.

Broadly speaking, two types of environmental impacts can occur because of a development like this. The obvious development impact comes from the direct impacts of clearing native vegetation. The more subtle impacts are indirect impacts that come about from things like soil erosion and disturbance by people using the nearby site. They can also come about subtly by the increase in introduced animal presence, such as the black rats that we get in the city that prosper in environments where food and rubbish might be left. So, the indirect impacts of this development can go a lot further than those marks on a map.

The impacts need to be weighed up very carefully. People need to say, 'do you really want to risk some of this bushland that's been set aside in a national park specifically for conservation?'

I mentioned before the patch of bushland that we're talking about here. Comparing photographs (ABOVE), there are parts of that bushland that were present in the 1930s and 1940s. So it's been around for a long time. I do agree that the edges of that bushland have been disturbed by weeds. I also agree that it is solid bushland now, and it can easily be managed and remedied.

So, the first question that's been answered already this afternoon is that we need to review the biodiversity assessment report. We need to see what it covers in terms of legislation, and I've spoken about the Biodiversity and Conservation Act, and that's a necessity; in my quick reading of the report, though, one thing I didn't notice straight out was whether or not it covers the National Parks and Wildlife Act. To gazette a national park, you need to zone the land as a national park for conservation, so this land is zoned C1, so it has its own specific objectives for management. The flora and fauna impact assessment needs to evaluate what you're doing to the environment against the objectives of the national park and the, you know, the conservation zone objectives. There's Commonwealth legislation that provides a layer of protection too, and then there's also things like the Biosecurity Act which covers weeds and feral animals and the duty of care, some of the indirect impacts that you can have as well. 

Looking at legislation is useful when you're considering impact. This slide (ABOVE) covers the National Park's objectives, and it comes from the National Parks and Wildlife Service Act of 1974. I've put some comments related to the objectives in the right-hand column. If you look at point number one, the purpose of reserving lands in National Parks is to identify, protect and conserve areas containing outstanding or representative ecosystems, natural or cultural features or landscapes or phenomena to provide opportunities for public appreciation, inspiration and sustainable visitor or tourist use and enjoyment, etc. Clearing an area of heathland doesn't achieve that aim, particularly when there are alternatives. Similar things are written down in some of the other objectives, but a national park is to be managed by the following principles: the conservation of biodiversity, the maintenance of eco system function, the protection of geological and geomorphological features and natural phenomena and the maintenance of natural landscapes etc. So again, clearing that site goes against the very basic requirements for national parks.

One of the other objectives that stood out, and it's very relevant to this proposal, is that it talks about the provision for sustainable use, including adaptive reuse of any buildings or structures. Modified natural areas having regard to the conservation of the National Park's natural and cultural values.

In conclusion, we need to review the biodiversity assessment report. To see how thoroughly the site has been investigated and what the authors have said about it. We need to see if the actual scope of the report provides an allowance for looking at alternatives that have a lesser environmental impact. This site has significant historical value and substantial biodiversity.  It is also “inner city native vegetation”. Can we afford to allow vegetation like this in our national parks to be whittled away? Why should we? So, I ask the question, why clear bushland at all in a national park?

When alternatives are available, this is setting a precedent that could have ramifications for this national park and other national parks. Because if you can do it here, you can also do it elsewhere. There are some really important principles here. Coming back to the threatened species legislation, one of the dangers inherent in the Biodiversity Conservation Act, as it applies to this site, is that this is not an endangered forest type. Sandstone vegetation of this type is relatively widespread up and down the coast, but it's one of the communities set aside to be conserved by the National Park. There are threatened species values in this landscape, but it's not vital for threatened species, but it is an important part of the overall vegetation and landscape of the National Park.

I'll finish by saying that one of the things that I did notice when I read the report was that there's a constraints map that maps the constraints of the vegetation surrounding the site. The heathland is mapped as high-constrained vegetation. So the information that you've been told, if they did imply that it was a low constraint, is different from what the ecological report says. So, it deserves careful scrutiny.

– end transcript Dr David Roberstson –