Home

Green Wedge groups say keep housing development out of the fire-prone areas.

State Government wants to change the native vegetation protection rules to encourage householders to clear more trees from around their houses (Land-clearing laws to change in wake of fires, The Age, 24/2) yet paradoxically also proposes to release another 23,000 hectares of green wedge land for development, much of it in fire-prone pastures and woodlands. 

 
The Urban Development Institute of Australia advocates handing native vegetation protection to the Department of Planning: but in 2006 this same planning department approved a housing development where timber-framed houses can be seen under construction in the environmentally significant remnant Grey Box forest on Eynesbury Estate in the Western Plains Green Wedge, north of Werribee, apparently in breach of the 30m buffer required by the CFA.   VCAT has also permit housing in fire-prone areas of Nillumbik, over-ruling a Council refusal. (See examples in attached pictures and on next page)
 
Now the Premier says these home-owners should be able to clear more trees from around their homes and UDIA wants DSE out of the picture. Home-owners are already allowed to clear native trees within 10 m from their houses and sheds and shrubs within 30 metres under exemptions from the native vegetation protection provisions – more in wildfire areas. 
 
The Green Wedges Coalition is committed to the protection of native vegetation but has never objected to exemptions permitting clearing for fire prevention. Environmentalists are aware that native grasslands and grassy woodlands may require regular management burns to maintain species diversity and to reduce fuel loads. We are personally mourning the loss of deeply loved members in the St Andrews and Steels Creek fires and our president, Kahn Franke has been putting in 13-hour days with the Panton Hill fire brigade.
 
It is time to stop blaming environmentalists for the tragic bushfire losses and to take a hard look at developers who use the bushland environment as a selling point for suburban sprawl.
 
Beyond the obvious need to tighten building controls in fire-prone areas before re-building, State Government should take its own advice and wait for the Royal Commission before assigning blame or handing powers over native vegetation to the Planning Department responsible for the hazardous development now underway at Eynesbury and elsewhere.
 
They should also halt current Urban Growth Boundary expansion plans to permit more residential suburban sprawl into the green wedges. It is time for State Government to defend its planning scheme instead of giving in to developers’ every demand. If State Government increased the density of development within the existing UGB, they would have plenty of land in the existing growth corridors and would not need to expand into fire-prone areas (see attached analysis.)
 
Home owners would be protected from fire and the forests and grasslands would be protected from developers bent on short-term profits. The fires we saw racing through new houses on suburban quarter-acre blocks at Whittlesea on Black Saturday demonstrate the danger and futility of allowing further suburban sprawl in the northern, western and Westernport green wedges.
 
 http://www.gwc.org.au/node/72
This release may be attributed to Rosemary West, Joint Coordinator, Green Wedges Coalition. For comments contact GWC President, Kahn Franke. For comment on Eynesbury, ring Harry van Moorst, coordinator of the Western Region Environment Centre