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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1307 ..

MR STANHOPE: You did tell us that.

Mr Smyth: You voted against it.

MR STANHOPE: No, we did not vote against that; we voted for the protection of the trees. But it needs to be acknowledged and recognised in future debates we have around the protection of yellow box/red gum in the ACT that we do need to be a little bit sophisticated and refined in our debate and in the decisions we take around protecting this endangered ecological community.

There is a danger, I acknowledge, in full frontal attacks aimed at protecting yellow box/red gum when we are not distinguishing between remnant yellow box/red gum trees and endangered yellow box/red gum grassy woodland ecological communities. The view of the department of the environment which will be reflected in the lowland woodland conservation strategy on the basis of all of the expert advice that has been taken into account in the preparation of that strategy is that the north Watson yellow box/red gum trees are not an endangered ecological community. They are remnant trees. There is no connectivity there. They are not part of the endangered woodlands. They are that degraded that they have past the point of recognition or definition as part of the endangered ecological community. They are past the point of no return. That conclusion is consistent with action plan 10.

As Mr Wood and Mrs Dunne just said, the trees have amenity and habitat value and they will be protected, as the Labor Party said they would, within the areas declared as Justice Robert Hope Park and its proposed extension. The grassland adjacent to Justice Robert Hope Park is not, I am advised by the department of the environment, an example of the natural temperate grassland endangered ecological community that is subject to action plan 1. Repeated ecological assessment of the area indicates that it will not have any conservation values that warrant its protection. The view of the department of the environment is that the grassland adjacent to Justice Robert Hope Park has no conservation values that warrant its protection as part of the lowland woodland conservation strategy-none.

To restore a woodland that is representative of the yellow box/red gum ecological community from the degraded vegetation that now remains would require a very large input of resources, far beyond the capacity of this government at the moment to provide. The area is not a priority for restoration. Good luck to the community if they wish to attempt that. There are, however, extensive sections of lowland woodland in nearby areas where restoration activities would be far better applied for much greater conservation return, the point that Mrs Dunne made.

These are the difficult decisions the government will have to make. There are great swathes of endangered yellow box/red gum, particularly in north Gungahlin, currently denoted for residential development that have a far higher conservation value and are issues that will occupy much of our attention in the coming months and years in terms of the decisions that we need to take and make in relation to the needs of an expanding ACT, acknowledging that it is anticipated that over the next 25 to 30 years the population of the ACT will increase by about 100,000.

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