I have had the lucky chance to witness new housing developments in my area and new public building renovations and their landscaping plans and not a single one of these urban developments has used native vegetation for their landscaping, all I saw was exotic plants being used and an effort to keep birds as far away as possible. Some of these new landscaping took place in public places like shopping centres and clubs not to mention the new housing estates who only used carpets of precut exotic lawn grass and exotic bushes. No creation of natural habitat whatsoever was even contemplated infact if there was any native vegetation originally, it was quickly replaced with exotics. What chance in the world do native birds in these circumstances have absolutely none and threfore I guess the people living there will never learn to appreciate their native flora and fauna and therefore their conservation will fall by the way.
Doublebar, I feel your pain. In Mt Barker, SA, there's a real estate agent who has two Rainbow Lorikeets in flight as part of its logo & yet this business has led the charge in desecrating the landscape in its efforts to engorge its piggy bank.
Several days ago I wrote to the SA Minister of Housing about the environmentally hostile housing & landscaping that are being built in SA. Modern houses in this state are designed to ensure that as much greenhouse gas as possible is pumped into the atmosphere because they have no climate-ameliorating features such as verandah & wide eaves. The landscaping around these houses is almost entirely of feral plants which provide little or no habitat for native wildlife. And the landscaping often features moss rocks ripped from land in the eastern parts of the Mt Lofty Ranges thus ensuring a massive erosion problem for future generations to deal with & a destruction of habitat for local wildlife, particularly reptiles.
The crass insensitivity of these housing developers seems to know no bounds. Meanwhile, I look forward to the Minister's reply. Watch this space.
I wish you luck with your endeavor, all I know is that nsw is a broken state environmentally and the politicians no matter what party they belong to have forgotten and neglected the native environment and they are all in the pockets of big corporations and business men. Money talks as they say.
For Australian birds, natives=life, exotics=death, so do them a favour and go plant some natives and save their lives.
Thanks, doublebar. I heard a report on the ABC this morning which indicated that the NSW government is colluding with the dirty energy sector in destroying Koala habitat. Oh, dear!