Attachment 1 to Item 53 - Roadside Vegetation Management Plan

H AW K E S B U R Y C IT Y C O U N C IL R O AD S ID E V E G E T AT IO N M AN AG E M E N T P L AN
• If work areas are within high or medium conservation priority roads or near protected
areas, prevent livestock within roadside environments.
6.6 NATIVE FAUNA MANAGEMENT
As noted in Section 3.5, where areas of high conservation value vegetation abuts roads, probabilities of
collisions between vehicles and native fauna can increase, resulting in road kill of native fauna. Roads
may also act as barriers to fauna movement across the landscape. Thus, there are issues relating to
native fauna management that are related to the maintenance of fauna habitat within roadside
environments, but these are slightly different management issues.
There are a number of spatio-temporal factors which contribute to the incidence of road kill along roads.
Some of these factors include season, time of day, roadside features (presence of cover, curves, road
cuttings, drainage lines), fauna behaviour, traffic speed and traffic volume (Forman et al. 2003). There
are also a number of factors which contribute to roads preventing fauna from crossing them (eg. fauna
behaviour, and traffic speed and volume). As many of these factors are unrelated to roadside
environments or may involve providing or building structures along roads (such as fences, overpasses,
and underpasses), a full prescription of management actions attempting to prevent or reduce the
incidence of road kill is outside of the scope of this RVMP. Even so, some management actions relating
to roadside vegetation are provided below.
• While observing the vertical clearance identified in section 6.1 for road safety purposes,
allow for tree branches (which are deemed safe) above identified height to extend over the
road unless they are deemed unsafe (i.e. hollow, burnt out, trunk is not thick enough to
hold the weight of the branch). This will allow for arboreal mammals to move across the
road at height rather than at ground level;
• Do not mow or slash vegetation directly adjacent to roads along high and medium
conservation priority roads outside of the road safety prescriptions identified in section 6.1.
This encourages many fauna species to move to roadsides, making them more susceptible
to being killed by passing vehicles.
It should be noted that comprehensive management of roadside environments for the prevention of
collisions between vehicles and fauna resulting in road kill involves more than the management of
roadside vegetation and provision of mitigating road structures. For example, driver education and
driver management influencing driver behaviour is an effective means by which road kill can be
reduced.
6.7 WEED MANAGEMENT
The general principal behind the actions provided is to prevent weed spread into areas not currently
infested. It is important that work practices which reduce the spread of weeds into areas not currently
infested, including wash down and decontamination of vehicles, importation of weed free soils and road
making materials, training staff in appropriate identification of weed species and appropriate methods of
control, are adopted. This work will be undertaken by the local control authority, the Hawkesbury River
County Council.
The following actions detail how weeds should be managed.
• Monitor outbreaks of declared noxious weeds, WoNS and significant environmental weeds
in the Hawkesbury LGA, particularly near roadsides;
• Produce a strategy to control (and where possible eradicate) such outbreaks;
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