The NSW Bushfire Inquiry recognised the need to identify the most important natural and cultural assets in the national park estate, so that special provision can be made for their conservation.

In 2020 the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 was amended to allow the Minister for the Environment to declare an area to be an Asset of Intergenerational Significance (AIS). An AIS can be any area of exceptional value – natural or cultural – that warrants special protection including dedicated management measures.

The first tranche of AIS is intended to protect the most important habitat for threatened species. Subsequent themes for AIS declarations may include nationally significant wetlands or important cultural heritage.

Potential declarations of environmental AIS will be informed by a range of considerations that include:

• sites for critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable species
• important areas for breeding, feeding or shelter
• locations where locally extinct mammal species are being reintroduced
• where the national park otherwise provides important habitat

Opportunities to declare land in national parks as a cultural AIS will also be examined. Aboriginal communities will lead the process to determine areas with Aboriginal cultural heritage significance in national parks for declaration as cultural assets.

These cultural assets may include lands with tangible cultural heritage of importance to Aboriginal people, such as rock art, scar trees and middens. Protection may also be provided to intangible values, such as places of spiritual importance where storylines live on in the landscape and where significant cultural activities occurred and continue to take place.

What about those areas that will be flooded if Warragamba Dam is raised?

Conservation action plans

For each threatened species AIS, NPWS is under a statutory obligation to prepare and implement a concise conservation action plan (CAP) which sets out:

• key risks to the declared area of habitat for the threatened species
• priority actions to reduce risks to this important habitat – such as dedicated feral animal control or fire management, or the establishment of insurance populations
• actions to measure and report on the health/population of the threatened species (metrics)

In most cases, draft CAPs will be exhibited for public comment and advice sought from the National Parks and Wildlife Advisory Council.

The first declaration of an AIS was made in January 2021 for the Wollemi pine. In September the Environment Minister, Matt Kean announced a further 221 AIS sites that are habitat for 92 threatened species. They comprise 66 types of plants, 13 mammals, seven frogs, four birds and three reptiles. The 221 sites cover just over 300,000 hectares, or almost 4% of the national park estate. But national parks cover only about 9% of the state so the new protection is going to a very small proportion of the state.

Also he announced that the government has set a target of zero extinctions of native wildlife in the state’s national parks estate and an aim to improve and stabilise the status of threatened species. This will involve measures such as additions of land to the national park estate, creating a network of predator-free areas to support the return of locally extinct species (e.g. platypus in Royal National Park), consideration of threatened species in fire plans, feral animal control.

There is no mention of increased funding for all this activity.

This information comes from the Environment, Energy and Science Group which is part of the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.

It is interesting to note that there are some local asset of intergenerational significance (AIS) sites protecting an unusual plant, Haloragodendron lucasii. There are four sites, one in Garigal National Park below Barra Brui Oval and three totalling about 300 ha in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in North Turramurra and St Ives. It is classified as endangered under both NSW and federal conservation legislation.

The Australian Plant Society reveals that H. lucasii was:

First recorded near ‘Gordon in a wild gully’ in 1908, five specimens of H. lucasii were held in the National Herbarium of NSW. The last specimen was collected in 1926, and following subsequent unsuccessful searches, the species was presumed extinct. That is until 1986 when the species was rediscovered at St Ives.

The rediscovered population was spread over a distance of at least 150 m along a terrace below the cliff line, and appeared to comprise several hundred plants growing among and out of a tangle of Gleichenia and Bauera. However, it was determined that the rediscovered population comprised only two plants. The first plant covered an area of 20 m², with its underground stems giving the appearance of many separate plants. The second plant was even larger, spreading some 120 m along the terrace, but was discontinuous probably due to the effect of bushfires and the surrounding vegetation. It was, however, found to be a single individual or clone. More remarkable was that the plants were estimated to be 400 to 500 years old.

It was also established that the plants were sterile (i.e. produced no pollen). It was speculated that here was a remnant plant from an earlier era bound for extinction in the short term.

A further discovery effort was undertaken in 1997 by the NPWS, an ANU PhD student and Ku-ring-gai Council plus community volunteers. The story is told in this paper.

Over two flowering seasons three new populations of ‘Hal’ were found containing up to seven individuals. This doubled the number of known populations and genetic individuals. Still no fruit or seedlings were found so the verdict of sterility remains.

John Martyn has recently been on the hunt to spot these plants in North Turramurra. He described the ones he found as a maze of underground stems or runners that put up a small forest of suckers to around waist height. Its normal setting is below sandstone benches or drop-offs where it seems to like the runoff moisture.

But interestingly, at the site off the Bobbin Head trail there are three distinct sucker clusters that seem to me too far apart for an underground link. One is slightly downstream on a tiny creek line as if seeds (do they exist?) had washed down.

It seems there is more information to be discovered.

The Morrison government has proposed scrapping recovery plans for almost 200 endangered species and habitats. Recovery plans are documents that set out actions needed to stop the extinction of threatened species. Ministers are legally bound not to make decisions that are inconsistent with them. However there is a huge backlog in the finalisation of recovery plans.

In 2020 the Environment Department revealed to a Senate estimates hearing that not one recovery plan had been finalised for 18 months and more than 170 were overdue, e.g. the Blue Gum High Forest recovery plan that has not been completed over the 14 years since it was declared critically endangered.

Instead of a recovery plan a ‘conservation advice’ is written that does not have the same legal force under national law. This has been possible under changes made to the EPBC Act in 2007.

The species and ecological communities to be given priority for a recovery plan are those that are most frequently affected by development and have often been referred for assessment by the minister as to whether the development should not proceed or conditions should be imposed. A prime example is the Cumberland Plain Woodland because of all the development in western Sydney but it is on the list of ecological communities to be downgraded to a conservation advice.

Another example is Blue Gum High Forest. The data provided only covers sites of BGHF on public land. It is important that the conservation advice also applies to private land such as the Mirvac site that includes about 3 ha outside the demolition area. If the conservation advice does not have the same legal status as recovery plans then we are left with council management policies to ensure that endangered species and ecological communities are protected.

The government is asking for feedback on proposed decisions to abandon recovery plans for 185 species and ecological communities. Consultation closes on 2 November 2021.

In the previous issue of STEP Matters we provided information on what wasn’t happening with the Mirvac development on the IBM site next to Cumberland State Forest.

A local planning panel meeting was finally held on 15 September to determine whether to approve Mirvac’s development application to demolish the IBM buildings and the surrounding vegetation. There was a large number of passionate speakers opposing the DA.

The chief concern was the clearing of 1,253 trees. There is a basic disagreement as to whether most of this area can be classified as Blue Gum High Forest. Mirvac argued that they were planted as part of the creation of the IBM corporate park. Council documents show that most of the trees had naturally regenerated. But then council determined that it is okay to clear them because of other conditions that will be imposed such as biodiversity offsets, dedication of forest on other parts of the site to management by Forestry Corp (that is, to become part of Cumberland State Forest), some weed clearing and planting a measly 60 trees elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the planning panel approved the DA so, no doubt, the demolition will be starting soon. There were some minor amendments to the conditions of consent. There were no definite assurances that the trees would be checked for nesting birds or nocturnal animals before the clearing takes place.

An attempt was also made to get the clearing of Blue Gum High Forest assessed by the federal minister for the environment as a controlled action under the EPBC Act but that was unsuccessful.