I want to alert residents to ongoing threat to koala habitat in Port Macquarie.
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Two developments emphasis the problem - the extension of Port Macquarie Airport Runway and the proposed caravan park on the Fantasy Glades site.
Each will remove significant numbers of trees, 50 hectares at the airport, and around 120 trees at the Fantasy Glades site.
There is provision for an off-set of land to repay the loss, at the airport but this may not be anywhere near the cleared land and therefore the impact on the local population can over time be devastating.
We need to insist on a commonsense approach to maintain local habitat and not pretend that an off-set of land is necessarily of any use to the local koala population, unless that off-set is realised locally – it could be outside the Hastings.
There is time to make a submission on the caravan park, by 30 June, the DA is 2017/413. We must continue to monitor any developments and off-sets of land to maintain a holistic environment with corridors for the koala population.
It should also be noted that the process of notifying residents of change to zoning and of proposed developments is not working because even people neighbouring proposed developments often hear about the proposals incidentally or not at all.
Mick Hall,
convenor Three Rivers Greens