Video explaining Alterative TOD Scenarios

Watch the video of Ku-ring-gai Council’s ‘Planning for better outcomes, Alternative Scenarios to the TOD SEPP, On-line Forum 21 November 2024’

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Our never-ending desire to subjugate the earth

Philipp Blom, author of ‘Subjugate the Earth: The Beginning and End of Human Domination of Nature’ says if we are to survive we must urgently move away from the Bronze Age thinking that humans are the dominant species on the planet

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PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in Ku-ring-gai?

A new study found a specific type of “forever chemical” is more prevalent than expected in firefighting foams that were once widely used across Australia.

Researchers say the findings underline the need for better monitoring of a wider range of PFAS chemicals in the environment.

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Housing pushing out wildlife

Ku-ring-gai residents have been invited to comment on the public exhibition of alternative scenarios to the Transport Oriented Development (TOD) that rezones 400 metres around Roseville, Lindfield, Killara and Gordon until 17 December 2024.

Ku-ring-gai Council has based its alternative scenarios on seven principles including avoiding environmentally sensitive areas.

Yet Ku-ring-gai as a collective whole, with its wildlife corridors, canopy trees, and threatened species is one large environmentally sensitive area.

Ku-ring-gai is the ‘middle ring’ that connects wildlife from the western side of the railway line (Lane Cove National Park) to the eastern side (Lane Cove National Park). Even the bushland along the railway corridor has NSW Government signage identifying the fenced off bushland as “environmentally sensitive land”.

One of the challenges in responding to the alternative TOD scenarios is the framing of the NSW planning system that has historically refused to recognise Ku-ring-gai’s environmentally sensitivity and the cumulative damage of successive decades of habitat loss as a result of housing densification.

Knocking down one house means the loss of trees. Knocking down 30 houses along a street means the loss of perhaps 50 trees. Knocking down every house within 400 metres of Roseville, Lindfield, Killara and Gordon will be catastrophic for wildlife. It is common to see, even 30 metres from Gordon Railway Station, bush turkeys, rosellas, king parrots and king fishers and possums.

Ku-ring-gai Council’s data shows that Ku-ring-gai lost 1.4% of its tree canopy between 2020 and 2022. The Council’s Urban Forest Strategy aims to increase the canopy cover to 49% by 2036, which means planting an additional 44,000 trees. How can this achieved with an additional 23,200 dwellings to be built in the next 15 years?

Ku-ring-gai is one of the few remaining suburbs that contains houses surrounded by front and back gardens. This residential housing type across established Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane suburbs is fast disappearing, being bulldozed for ‘in-fill’ low-to-high rise apartments. To build these apartments the tree covered gardens have been felled, bulldozed, subdivided and replaced by hard surfaces. This urban densification increases population pressures on suburbs with increased traffic congestion and demands on water, sewerage and energy infrastructure. Where once wildlife was abundant. They now disappear. Their homes have been displaced by concrete. The fragmentation of habitat makes life more threatening to them.

The anthropocentric focus of our modern society prioritises human need before wildlife and the natural world. Australians are now facing a ‘housing crisis’ that is intertwined with an environmental crisis. More housing supply brings more habitat destruction.

People are utterly dependent upon wildlife, trees and the natural vegetation. Collectively they are our “ecosystem engineers” that provide us with the clean air, soil and water to stay healthy and alive.

The NSW Government appear to be willfully ecologically ignorant in relation to Sydney’s urban bushland suburbs – including Ku-ring-gai. Tim Flannery described are ecological ignorance as:

Such is the depth of public ignorance about Australia’s extinction crisis that most people are unaware it is occurring, while those who do know of it commonly believe that our national parks and reserves are safe places for threatened species. In fact, the second extinction wave is in full swing and it’s emptying our national parks and wildlife reserves as ruthlessly as other landscapes. ” 

Tim Flannery ‘After the Future’ Quarterly Essay (2012)

Like climate change, wildlife extinction is an existential crisis. By the time we are made aware of the Powerful Owls’ or the Blue Gum High Forest’s dire future it is almost impossible to reverse their extinction trajectory.

Governments are determined to focus on economic growth through more housing ‘supply’. This means deregulating the planning system, removing environmental controls and allowing developers to bypass local government rezoning controls. The current NSW Government is handing over planning controls to developers who are advocating for a tsunami of high rise to replace Sydney’s remaining garden and bushland low residential suburbs. This will decimate Sydney’s fragile urban environment on a scale never seen before.

The article below Hidden detail on road sign highlights growing ‘problem’ in Aussie suburbs: ‘Reverse domino effect’ by Michael Dahlstrom, Yahoo Environmental Editor, published on Yahoo News, 15 October 2024 highlights how new housing developments are having a devastating impact on Queensland’s urban koalas. The same could be said for Ku-ring-gai’s wildlife. Read the full article below:



While most of us were getting ready for bed on Monday night, a sad situation was unfolding in one Aussie suburb. Clinging to the back of a road sign was an iconic marsupial that belonged up a tree.

Although koalas are used to promote Australia as a wildlife-friendly tourism destination, they are facing extinction in Queensland and NSW, and are listed as endangered. Rescuer John Knights was almost asleep when a phone call came through about the displaced animal.

“It just had this ‘what do I do next’ expression on its face,” he told Yahoo News on Tuesday.

Had Knights not arrived, the animal’s prospects were not good. He was beside a major road, and close to an industrial estate in the Brisbane suburb of Mount Gravatt East. Like most of Queensland’s southeast, large backyards that once contained trees have been bulldozed and subdivided, increasing human density while forcing out koalas.

“When you decide to knock your house down, that’s one less tree and a few bushes gone. But then the bloke over the road does it, and the bloke around the corner does it,” Knights said.

“These koalas have no sanctuary when they’re trying to get from one area to another. So they’re just wandering around hopelessly lost. And people say: Isn’t it wonderful to see these urban koalas. They’re not urban koalas. They’re frightened lost animals because we put a road in where they want to live.”

Koalas a sign of a healthy ecosystem

Knights describes koalas as an umbrella species, as when they flourish, it means the rest of the environment is also healthy. And seeing so many regularly displaced is sign of a “problem” facing Australia’s suburban wildlife.

“If you create good habitat for koalas, everything that lives underneath their trees has a happy home,” he said.

“From possums, to gliders, the owls, the birds that live in the trees, the animals that live on the ground, the insects that live in the bush, the microbes that keep everything working — it’s a reverse domino effect.”

Why are so many koalas in our suburbs?

This spring, Knight is on track to have responded to 200 callouts by the end of the month. During the season, males looking for mates, and sub-adults looking for new territory often find themselves on roads and in backyards.

That’s because the forest they once called home has been destroyed to make way for new developments. Crossing between the fragmented remnants of habitat often means traversing suburbia.

The callout to help the koala on the road sign on Monday was Knights’ second for the day. Earlier a koala climbed up a power pole at nearby Camp Hill. It was brought down safely and released into nearby bushland.


Australia’s environment laws failing to protect endangered species

Sadly, finding places to release koalas is becoming increasingly difficult, as koala habitat continues to be destroyed. An independent review of Australia’s nature protection laws under the Morrison government in 2020 found they are “ineffective”, “weak” and “tokenistic”. While there have been some reforms since the Albanese government was elected in 2022, endangered species are continuing to lose habitat at an alarming rate.

A Worldwide Fund for Nature report this week found there has been a 73 per cent decline in global wildlife populations in 50 years. While an investigation by Wilderness Society this week found 300,000 animals a year are being displaced or killed by Tasmania’s logging industry every year, including endangered species.

Yahoo News has been reporting on koala displacement since 2019, and the problem has only continued to worsen.

Two weeks ago, in Queensland’s Moreton Bay, rescuers were called to help three koalas desperately clinging to power poles over a period of just 14 hours. While on the Gold Coast the federal and state governments are building a major new freeway, the Coomera Connector, through important koala habitat.

The Queensland government has refused to release environmental reports about its impact, claiming they are “ecologically sensitive”. But rescuers say it’s routinely displacing wildlife, and because of ongoing development across the Gold Coast, they believe the city’s urban koalas face extinction.



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FOKE opposes rezoning Patyegarang/ Lizard Rock, Morgan Road, Belrose


FOKE has been invited to speak at the Planning Panel regarding its opposition to the Patyegarang/ Lizard Rock, Morgan Road, Belrose (PP-2022-3802) development proposal.

The public meeting will be held online on Monday 9 December 2024. You can register to speak or listen to this meeting at: https://forms.office.com/r/5ZXRvmdXUz  For assistance for your speech contact Northern Beachers Enviornolink at email: bushlandguardians@envirolink.net.au

FOKE will join Northern Beaches Envirolink Inc who has also registered to speak and who will speak on behalf of the people who signed their petition and supporters. 

It is important that the panel hear the overwhelming weight of public sentiment who are opposed to this proposal, and hear their broad range of concerns. As such, we strongly encourage people to register to speak by registering at  https://forms.office.com/r/5ZXRvmdXUz . 

FOKE opposes the rezoning of land at Patyegarang, Morgan Road, Belrose (PP-2022-3802), formerly known as ‘Lizard Rock’ on public exhibition until 7 November, 2023

FOKE wishes to express its strong opposition to the proposal to rezone 71ha of high conservation value bushland at Patyegarang, Morgan Road, Belrose (PP-2022-3802), formerly known as ‘Lizard Rock’.  If the 450 residential dwellings at Morgan Road, Belrose/ Oxford Falls are approved it would have a detrimental, devastating and irreversible environmental impact on the Northern Beaches’ biodiversity, climate, bushfire safety, strategic planning as well as setting a dangerous precedent for other bushland sites, some of which will impact on Ku-ring-gai’s bushland.   

Friends of the Ku-ring-gai Environment (FOKE) is a community based organisation aimed at protecting and conserving the natural, built and cultural heritage of Ku-ring-gai. 

FOKE opposes the rezoning proposal of Patyegarang, Morgan Road, Belrose (PP-2022-3802) for the following reasons:

Negative impact on Biodiversity


NSW is facing an extinction crisis with over 1000 species on the threatened list, yet the Patyegarang Planning Proposal will clear massive areas of intact and pristine bushland that will destroy habitat and exacerbate NSW’s biodiversity crisis. 

FOKE notes that the planning proposal seeks to rezone 19.8ha of the site for C2 Environmental Conservation purposes but argues that this is inadequate in protecting the high biodiversity of the whole site. 

If approved the rezoning will lead to irreversible loss and local extinction of endangered species including powerful owls, red-crowned toadlets, bandicoots, lyrebirds, wallabies, threatened glossy black cockatoos and endangered heath monitors.

Negative impact on the Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment

If approved the rezoning will create unacceptable increases in stormwater runoff that risks flooding the Wakehurst Parkway and Oxford Falls Roads. 

Excess stormwater runoff will also negatively impact on threatened species including the red-crowned toadlets and spotted-tail quolls and other marine animals living in and around the Narrabeen Lagoon.

Negative Impact on Sydney’s air quality, temperatures and carbon emissions
If approved the rezoning will exacerbate air pollutants, increase urban heat and reduce opportunities to capture greenhouse gases.

Urban bushland provides vital ecological services, such as oxygen, and water.  Urban bushland sites, such as Patyegarang “plays a key role in the climate system” providing essential carbon sinks to regulate Sydney’s temperatures and help store carbon. The NSW Government has a responsibility to commit to climate action and ensure it contributes to keeping  global warming to no more than 1.5°C as agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement.  Australia is one of twenty countries that is responsible for about 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Negative Impact on Life and Property during Bushfires
The site is located on bushfire-prone lands above a forested valley.  Northern Beaches Council has identified the site as having ‘extreme bushfire risk’ and evacuation problems with limited egress.

In a changing climate, bushfires are increasing in frequency and intensity.  It is no longer acceptable for new developments to be built in bushfire areas.   They pose unacceptable risks to the safety of residents, RFS and SES volunteers. Preserving bushland corridors are also vital escape routes for wildlife during bushfires.  If the NSW Government is committed to implementing the recommendations of the ‘Bushfire Royal Commission’ it must reject this rezoning proposal.

Broader Strategic planning implications

This rezoning proposal is effectively a ‘spot’ rezoning and inconsistent with key aspects of the Greater Sydney Region Plan, North District Plan, Northern Beaches Local Strategic Planning Statement – Towards 2040, and Northern Beaches Local Housing Strategy, particularly in terms of the preferred location and type of new housing and impacts on the environment and Metropolitan Rural Area.

The site lacks infrastructure and appropriate services (schools, open spaces, sports fields, bus services, health services, libraries). 

Despite the proposal seeking a limit of 450 dwellings, it is highly likely that once approved, further rezoning applications will occur to increase the site’s density.

Unacceptable traffic and urban sprawl
Theproposal will add to traffic congestion along Forest Way, Wakehurst Parkway, Warringah Road and Mona Vale Road contributing to more greenhouse gases.  Evidence shows that long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution has detrimental impacts on human health.   

Precedent for further inappropriate overdevelopment

If the Patyegarang Planning Proposal is approved it sets a precedent for further rezonings of Northern Beaches Aboriginal Land that that includes the 135-hectare bushland site at Ralston Avenue in Belrose (only 3.5km from the Patyegarang/Lizard Rock site) adjoining the Garigal National Park and the Ku-ring-gai bushland suburbs of St Ives, East Killara and East Lindfield. Development on this site poses extreme bushfire risk with the presence of overhead power lines with electrical currents between 66,000 to 500,000 volts surging through them. 

Overwhelmingly community opposition to rezoning proposal
The Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (MLALC) owns 912ha of bushland in the Northern Beaches, much of it permissible for residential development under the Aboriginal Land State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP). Ownership has been made possible by the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 that supports First Nations people’s economic self-determination through property development. 

However, development needs to be assessed on its planning merits.  The proposed development is not ecologically sustainable and not in the public interest.

On 29 June 2023, a Northern Beaches Bushland Guardians petition, signed by 12,000 people, including FOKE members and Ku-ring-gai residents, was presented to the NSW Legislative Assembly calling for the NSW Parliament to “repeal the amendments to the State Environment Planning Policy (Planning Systems) so that 227 hectares of land in the northern beaches is no longer subject to the development delivery plan.”

Sydney is blessed to have this bushland site, Patyegarang, with its rich Aboriginal cultural heritage and high conservation value. This is something that the NSW Government should celebrate and protect.

FOKE thus strongly urges the NSW Government to reject the Patyegarang, Morgan Road, Belrose (PP-2022-3802) planning proposal.

Yours faithfully

Kathy Cowley

PRESIDENT

cc The Hon Paul Scully MP Minister for Planning and Public Spaces

cc The Hon Stephen Kamper MP Minister for Lands and Property

cc The Hon Jihad Dib MP Minister of Emergency Services

cc The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC Minister for Climate Change, Minister for the Environment

cc The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Water

cc Ku-ring-gai Mayor and Councillors

cc The Hon Matt Cross MP Member for Davidson

cc The Hon Alister Henskens SC MP Member for Ku-ring-gai

cc The Hon Paul Fletcher MP Member for Bradfield



Summary

  • FOKE was established in 1994 to protect and conserve the natural, built and cultural heritage in the Ku-ring-gai local government area and is a member of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW and the Better Planning Network.
  • For over thirty years FOKE has argued for the need for ecologically sustainable planning, the protection of environmentally sensitive bushland and the need to protect urban bushland from habitat deforestation.
  • FOKE borders the Northern Beaches Council areas with the interface of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and Garigal National Park – important wildlife corridors to Ku-ring-gai.  The Ku-ring-gai suburbs of St Ives, East Killara and East Lindfield face Belrose.
  • FOKE is very concerned about the high risk of catastrophic bushfires particularly with increasing heat waves and extreme weather conditions as a result of climate change. 
  • As well the dangerous precedent that the  Patyegarang planning proposal at Morgan Road, Belrose (PP-2022-3802) has on other sites including the Raulson Avenue site – which would have negative impacts on Garigal National Park and the suburbs of St Ives, East Killara and East Lindfield.







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Sydney needs Ku-ring-gai’s cool trees

Australia’s two largest capital cities have far too little tree canopy, which increases the cities’ heat island effects and leads to increased rates of obesity, depression, anxiety and heatstroke.

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Portfolio 7 thanks FOKE

Sue Higginson, Chair of the Legislative Council’s Portfolio Committee No. 7 – Planning and Environment, has announced the release of its report – ‘Planning system and the impacts of climate change on the environment and communities’.

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