Metropolitan Melbourne Investigation - Victorian Environmental ...

3.2.2 Reserving Crown land with
biodiversity values
Maintaining natural values in areas outside conservation
reserves or the protected area system can be more
difficult in Melbourne than elsewhere because of the
pressures on public land to accommodate a number of
often incompatible uses. Indeed not all conservation can
be undertaken on public land and private land will play
an increasing role. Some apparently narrow public land
connections between sites can also be greatly enhanced
by complementary protection of natural values on
adjoining private land. Examples of narrow biolinks include
stream frontages, the coastline and government roads
(both used and unused).
Unreserved Crown land with remnant native vegetation
should be reserved, particularly land that is not subject
to government accepted LCC recommendations. The
reservation purposes should, as far as possible, include
the retention and protection of vegetation. The reservation
purpose should also be amended for reserved Crown
land with native vegetation, where the conservation of
biodiversity is not the primary reservation purpose, so
that retention and protection of native vegetation is a
secondary purpose.
RECOMMENDATION
Other approaches to protecting biodiversity on public
land include appropriate reservation and management
of Crown land. Some reservation purposes mean
that the land is dedicated to, and managed for,
biodiversity conservation, thus making it part of the
protected area system. Other reservation purposes are
more general or have a primary purpose unrelated to
biodiversity protection.
Using Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping
of DSE modelled data,* VEAC estimates that more than
41,000 hectares of reserved Crown land and more
than 5,400 hectares of unreserved Crown land within
the investigation area has native vegetation. In the
investigation area, about 485 hectares of unreserved
Crown land with remnant native vegetation are outside of
previous Land Conservation Council (LCC) investigation
areas and consequently are not managed in accordance
with any government accepted LCC recommendations.
The figures for unreserved Crown land derived from the
GIS mapping may be over-estimates given that some
reserved Crown land areas such as stream frontages,
some areas of coastline and some roads are often not
shown as reserved in DSE’s Crown land database. Note
also that some of the recommendations in chapter 7 of
this report propose reserving currently unreserved Crown
land with remnant native vegetation.
R1
Additional protection for Crown land with
remnant native vegetation be provided by:
(a) reserving unreserved Crown land for a
purpose that includes the protection of its
remnant native vegetation; and
(b) amending the reservation purpose of
reserved Crown land, where appropriate,
to include the protection of its remnant
native vegetation.
Preventing habitat loss and improving the condition
of native vegetation are more cost effective and
have significantly better conservation outcomes
than revegetation. 12 Given the high level of clearing
in metropolitan Melbourne, VEAC considers that all
Crown land with remnant native vegetation is important.
Above: Grassland and saltmarsh of the Victorian Volcanic
Plain bioregion, including those at Point Cook Coastal Park
and Cheetham Wetlands, are some of the most threatened
vegetation communities in Victoria.
* The modelled dataset of native vegetation and major water-based habitats (NV2005_EXTENT) was created from a time-series of images captured between
1989 and 2005. The modelling was completed in 2007 by DSE’s Arthur Rylah Institute.
24