I have noticed over the years that housing developments tend to use swampy areas that have been turned into ponds as the manditory environmental areas in their plans. Although I cut my bird watching teeth (still cutting them) watching water fowl and I understand that many swamps have been drained over the years I looks to me that there is an inbalance there and wonder if ducks and swans are almost the only wildlife that benifit. What about the birds/wo;dlife that need long grasses prickly scrub, tree hollows and other less popular to masses areas. What do other people think?
Hi Trev
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In general I agree.
Town Planners make lousy swamp designers, and Engineers are far worse at the actual construction thereof.
There are some good examples, and they have a mixture of environments within them - some deep water, some shallow reedy bits, some shrubs, etc.
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Cheers
Denis
Denis Wilson
www.peonyden.blogspot.com
I agree. I am working at a housing ( retirement resort) development site. it has been the edge of a flood plain for years, and marshy with heaps of spiky grasses and sand hollows etc. Once it is finished it will contain 195 homes in duplex form, which will benefit the butcherbirds, honey eaters etc. I know there will be a wetland drainage area that the storm water will be sent to, and they will beautify it . As the powers above me at work like a tropical look, that does not necessarily mean the right kinds of plants for wetland birds. Also it will be concentrated into one smaller area, which will cause territory problems. There are heaps of masked lapwings, herons , wood ducks etc in our area.
In our other resort, the council was covenanted a big piece of remnant rainforest cut off from the land developed, which they refused to allow entry to. it became smelly and an insect breeding ground as they did not think about the need for the stream to flow through as it would have in the past. Our company actually illegally put a drainage channel through to keep the water fresh. The area houses numerous birds and several enormous monitors and ecologically it would be very important in that area.
I think councils are just too compromised by the prospect of huge fees & rates coming forward and getting roads built etc.
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Hi guys, I posted some comments in regards to Birdgirls Rosellas along the same lines as this thread.
I honestly think that there is no thought at all that goes into the needs of wildlife by Developers,Councils etc except for the mandatory requirements of planting a few palms and cycads and as we all know that simply does not cut it.
As you all know I spend all my waking hours travelling this country and the amount of land destruction that is going on is an absolute joke.
My mother in law built in a Sippy Downs on the Sunshine coast and across the road was a huge man made lagoon and a natural corridor of the original trees and undergrowth that (in the contracts they gave to the home owners)was not to be touched and was a bird magnet. Guess what??? 12 months ago they bulldozed every tree and all the remaining undergrowth to put in more houses. She has sold up and left.
The lagoon at Mackay Botanical gardens has just been severly silted up by Mackay water pumping their sludge out of nearby settlement ponds into it,as a result the 8 Platypus that used to frequent there have dissapeared. After reading my other post in Birdgirls thread and this post you will see why I am starting to get a bit annoyed,the last few places that have been wildlife refuges around here have been decimated by our councils etc.
I am so over them I feel like choking one of the $%^^$&.
Anyway that is my say nad from what I have discovered our say does not count.
The trouble with this country is that we have a heap of spoon fed cotton wool clad young adults making the decisions about developements and they know nothing about the bush or what is in it.
Ahhhhh that feels better....lol
Go Tassie, let off that head of steam. I know just what you mean. the storm water drain "wildlife corridor" that runs past our fence has had a similar thing done. Across the road where it flattens out is a lovely grove of eucalypts and palms that the creek passes through and it ends in a billabong in a reserve area ( that was cut off from another greedy developer's site). Recently, a resident, who lives right on it ,complained to the council that it was choked up and needed some work as the echidnas and wallabies come down to feed and drink. This was within a week of the new council amalgamation. That next week, an excavator and slasher arrived and flattened the very banks that he was trying to prevent from falling in! So after a lot of phone calls, we had a meeting with the man in charge of storm water (as it was technically a storm water drain). Even though it is a beautiful creek that hosts many huge trees and plenty of wildlife inhabitants and ultimately - at the top of the hill (which is the whole Buderim scarp in height)it acts as a bridge/corridor to the Foote Sanctuary (which is home to many bird species)it is still just a stormwater drain!!!!!
Now that is ridiculous. After a bit of pressure, they sent out to the meeting an ecological conservation woman to try to work with the other side, but it all became a demarcation dispute and was bundled up in a lot of red tape and account cra*!
It took the dedication of the nearby resident to keep at them and have an illegal culvert removed from the developers former land, so that the water could flow to it's natural areas. However we are still waiting for the storm water division to provide the rocks etc to manage the flow and prevent erosion of the now denuded bank of the stream.
Our precious natural resources are all just a commodity to these people as they ride rough shod over the whole area.
I was told by the Chief environmental planner here, that a report was received from some population expert that said Buderim could take another 7000 people.
Guess what ..... infill + 7000 people means we may as well live in Sippy Downs in the end!
L'(
Cheers
Birdie
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Hi everybody
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I agree entirely.
Councils are very subject to pressure for "Growth".
On the wider picture, Rudd's dream of 50 million people by 2050 is madness.
Melbourne is planning to expand to 7 Million.
There will be concrete from Geelong to Berwick.
.
Time to address the growth obsession.
Cheers
Denis
Denis Wilson
www.peonyden.blogspot.com
I can not believe it. Just when we though the council couldn't get any more stupid, they are at it again about our stormwater drain.
They have now decided to restore the culvert at ratepayers expense, as the developer of the land must have protested. So.....they ripped the old one out....beautified the area and planted it to hold the banks together.....acknowledged that this very narrow strip of land (that they gave back to the developer as they didn't want it as part of their neighbouring reserve taken from the development)was deemed too steep and unsuitable for vehicle access... put barriers up to prevent vehicles from fall into the now deep stream/drain bed.... now they are pulling out the plants, concreting the base again ... ( 20m from a lovely billabong that is home to birds, wallabies, echidna and waterdragon etc).... rebuilding the culvert that leads to nowhere as the developer was given alternative access from a neighbouring street... and to add insult to injury, they are going to spray concrete all along our lovely little stream bed, bulldoze the sides and build big artificial pools as and when they they get the money, all to stabilise an area that they decimated in the first place. the residents are happy to have a working bee to look after it and all we wanted was a small amount of help not a big $%^&*@ sledgehammer and a concrete truck!
Unbelievable >'x
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Gidday Birdie, Ahhhh I know how you feel,sadly,don't ever think that Councils,Local and State Government cannot get any dumber because that simply will never be the case,that is one area they excel in.
This country,unfortunately,is run by people that do not have the ability or the guts to make decisions because they are all scared at the possibility of being held accountable.
They all love the pay,love their job titles but hate performing the actual task.
I rang the EPA this week about the Platypus dilema and surprise,surprise,that is not our area !!!! This bunch of rabbits were the Department of Enviroment and Heritage and are now known as the Enviromental Protection Agency.Platypus must not be part of the Enviroment. (Go Figure)not to be beaten I rang "The Daily Mercury" to see if they could get some answers for me, you guessed it, they don't care about a couple of dirty ol Platypus either.
So Birdie that was my week !!! What really hurts is my taxes are paying for all these bits of driftwood.
They all love the pay,love their job titles but hate performing the actual task.
Hey Tassie - sounds like some of the people I work with!! :'D
Those who are incompetent are quite safe because the person that hired them would never get rid of them as that would mean they were an idiot in the first place for hiring them!!
At least there is only you and your rig in your job
Cheers
Birdie
Sunshine Coast Queensland
To true Birdie,to true.
I have taken some pics of my area, and will post them here when I get around to uploading them. i am so impatient these days with optus that just the thought of trying to upload gives me the @#$%&
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Finally got round to uploading. Here is our beautiful area.
This is the "stormwater drain" further up the hill as dealt with presumably by the private developer of the exclusive gated estate there:
I will have to post the rest later, as optus is killing me tonight and I have to sleep sometime. don't have 6 hours to wait for it.
Sunshine Coast Queensland
the area surrounding our home, taken from through the trees further up the hill.
This is how the local council is dealing with the stormwater drain further down the hill and obviously not in the exclusive expensive subdivision.
Where there is money there is obviously a way to make it in keeping with the environment.
cheers
Birdie
Sunshine Coast Queensland
This was a very old post but I thought I'd resurrect it as we've had the newspaper and the channel 9 Win guys report on it now. Lets hope something good comes out of it. If it wasn't for the vigilant neighbour the council would have blown $100K on it and nobody would have been any the wiser.
Cheers
Birdie
Sunshine Coast Queensland
I hope you get some sence out of them after all Birdie. I have to laugh at some of the locals around here. They drain a swamp, build houses and rthen complain about the mozzies etc in the area. I'm afraid the developers only spend money on an area because the prospective buyers wouldn't pay as much unless they put some thought and cash into it. But that's life.
See Yez
Trev
Hi Trev
Well they have agreed to NOT spend the money on such a waste of space project as that, but no satisfactory answers from the council as to why the fiasco was ever allowed.
They have amalgamated the councils here and it seems to be a bigger botch up than ever! A friend of ours is the chief environmental planner and he said it just goes from bad to worse, with desk jockeys wasting time on "research and process of how to report stuff" instead of getting on with doing stuff to help our wildlife etc.
as you say.... that's life I guess
Cheers
Birdie
Sunshine Coast Queensland
You have to wonder when people are going to run out of BS to hide behind these days. They all want someone else to make the decision based on someone elses report so they can hide if it goes pear shaped. Unfortunately we live in a gutless society. But there are people who do care out there so maybe the glass is half full.
See Yez
Trev