Highway route ‘most ecologically damaging’: Council report
The Roads and Traffic Authority’s preferred route for the Woodburn to Ballina Pacific Highway upgrade is the most ecologically damaging of the options located in Ballina Shire, and intercepts the remants of the Big Scrub rainforest, a Ballina Shire report to the council says.
The preferred route, Route 2C, ‘traverses high-conservation value old-growth vegetation on the floodplain that provides high-quality habitat for a range of hollow-dependent birds, microchiropteran bat and arboreal mammal species, endangered ecological communities and the habitat of numerous known threatened flora and fauna species’, the report says.
“In the broader landscape perspective, the preferred highway route will fragment the Wardell heathland from the Blackwall Range to the north and the Tuckean Nature Reserve to the west,” the report said.
“This section of the Ballina Shire is considered regionally ecologically significant as it connects the coast to the Alstonville plateau in the north and the swampy lowlands to the west, including the Tuckean Nature Reserve.
“It also represents the largest area of contiguous native vegetation within the shire and, given it location within an identified Regional Corridor System, the subject area is regionally significant for the dispersal of fauna species throughout the broader landscape.”
The Ballina Shire report, presented to the January 19 meeting, said Route 2C also intercepted the heritage-listed Coolgardie Big Scrub rainforest remant located at the base of the Meridian Heights development.
The report says that before white settlement, the Big Scrub rainforest occupied an area of 75,000ha. Today, only 300ha, or 0.4 per cent, remains.
“The subject vegetation is therefore nationally ecologically significant,” the report said.
It said the council had spent considerable time and resources in preparing and supplying background information to the RTA, but ‘despite these efforts it is considered that the RTA and its consultants have largely ignored council’s input’.
“In addition, the RTA and its consultants, when determining the preferred route option, appear to have failed to obtain and/or utilise the raft of detailed ecological information available to them to make an informed decision when assessing the ecological impact of each of the short-listed route options,” the report said.
The report recommended that the council formally inform the RTA and the Roads Minister of its disappointment in the process.
It also recommended that the council accept an RTA invitation to make comment on the announced preferred route, and that the report presented to the January 19 meeting be included.
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