Macedon Ranges Draft Biodiversity Strategy lacks nature repair targets
Submission to Macedon Ranges Shire Council by Patrick Franics
Summary
The Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 should be a multi-dimensional document which provides inspiration to all shire’s interested residents and landholders to participate in nature repair to enhance and protect the shire’s flora and fauna and simultaneously combat climate change by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. It should present the shire’s increasing town populations with the opportunity to safely exercise while experiencing nature and wildlife within walking/bike riding distance of town boundaries. It should inspire rural and rural conservation zones landowners to undertake nature repair and restore what was a plains grassy woodland ecosystem across 25% of their 132,000 hectares by 2050. It should provide Macedon Ranges Shire Council with the blue print for how peri-urban local governments set the vision and agenda for on-going nature repair so humans as well as the fauna and flora can live in harmony.
Instead the Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 is one dimensional, written to satisfy council’s local government and state government legislative obligations and community feedback rather than providing a serious blue print for significantly increasing and protecting the shire’s fauna and flora biodiversity. This is because identifiable biodiversity enhancement, health, well- being and protection outcomes also known as nature repair require biodiversity benchmarks or audits across the shire’s land use zones in 2025 and new targets for these benchmarks in 2030. Without including targets the 2025 – 2030 Biodiversity Strategy is likely to result in the same unidentifiable outcomes as its predecessor the 2018 Biodiversity Strategy. Stating goals for biodiversity are unlikely to produce effective outcomes if targets are not included with them so achievements or otherwise can be identified.
An effective shire wide 2025 – 2030 Biodiversity Strategy will provide a vision and targets the shire council, rural land holders and town communities can be encouraged to achieve on the land they take responsibility for by 2030 based on 2025/26 biodiversity audit data (currently non-existent). Such targets for the five years to 2030 would include:
* Hectares of privately owned land across the Shire’s rural zones (farm and rural conservation) fenced off to restore plains grassy woodlands via biodiversity/environmental plantings and or remnant vegetation protection and enhancement.
Figure 1: Macedon Ranges Shire embraces 175,000 hectares of which 85,000 hectares is farming zone and 47,500ha is rural conservation zone. The Biodiversity Strategy 2025 -30 has no benchmark for existing protected conservation area hectares across these zones and a vision for the number of additional hectares the shire would like restored to plains grassy woodlands as part of biodiversity nature repair by 2030. Sources: MRSC.
* Hectares of privately owned land across the Shire’s rural zones fenced off for the combination of CO2 abatement environmental planting and nature repair along the lines of Clean Energy Regulators credit methodologies for supporting and increasing biodiversity while combating climate change
* Kilometres of fencing and hectares fenced off along riparian zones for supporting and increasing biodiversity while improving water quality in the shire’s creeks and rivers.
* Number of new rural zone landowners joining Land for Wildlife, landcare groups, biolinks projects and or participating in Melbourne Water and Western Water projects and conservation covenants.
* Area (hectares) of nature repair planting native species by friends groups volunteers in shire conservation reserves, along shire managed road verges and within town boundaries.
* Kilometres of shire and Transport Victoria roadside verges revegetated with native vegetation.
* Hectares of land owned by housing estate developers revegetated as buffers around proposed housing estates.
* Kilometres of shire managed roads outside town boundaries with the default 100km/h or posted 80km/h maximum speed limit reduced to 50km/h or less as advised by Austroads to minimise the kinetic energy transfer between a vehicle and unprotected road users and causes serious injury or fatality. Wildlife on and crossing shire managed roads are just as susceptible to kinetic energy transfer which causes serious injury and usually death.
* Where endangered native species are located across the shire, the number of hectares protected to enhance their populations.
* Number of rural zones landowners participating in fox and cat control programs.
* Hectares of farming zones land and shire land and verges where weeds of national significance have been removed or are under a program of removal and eradication by 2030.
Infographic: The Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s Draft Biodiversity Strategy presents a one dimensional approach to biodiversity without targets and fails to connect to multiple policies and strategies at local, state and federal levels whose success is associated with continuous and accelerated biodiversity nature repair. It is worth considering changing the Biodiversity Strategy’s name to the Nature Repair Strategy to give it the broad scope and direction it needs.
Key points
1: The 2018 Biodiversity Strategy contained 97 ‘strategy actions’ across 6 objectives with 14 themes to improve biodiversity with no data provided to demonstrate if any of the strategy actions made a positive contribution to the Shire’s biodiversity. The 2025 Draft Strategy authors state “much from the original strategy has been actioned and progressed“ yet “local biodiversity is increasingly threatened by habitat loss and degradation, invasive species and climate change”. No shire data is provided to demonstrate that change has been made to these biodiversity threatening processes between 2018 and 2025. If this is correct then the 2018 Biodiversity Strategy was for most biodiversity improvement indicators a failure and to state that Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 “is a refresh of the 2018 strategy …retaining (its) guiding principles and visions” means there is no reason to expect a different outcome for biodiversity in 2030. The 2025 Biodiversity Strategy adopts a similar approach to the 2018 Strategy listing 78 ‘strategy actions’ across 5 Objectives and 13 Themes with not one target outcome expected by 2030 included.
The draft Strategy Actions ignore the part the shire’s stakeholders can play in contributing to the National Roadmap for protecting and conserving 30% of Australia’s land by 2030, which requires an additional 60 million hectares of land protected. The Roadmap states “The 30 by 30 target is an ambitious goal. It requires the Australian, state and territory governments, non-government stakeholders and the private sector to work collaboratively to expand and enhance Australia’s protected and conserved areas. Landholders who are motivated to voluntarily protect or conserve the biodiversity on their land can also make an important contribution.
Figure 2: Some landholders across the Shire’s farm and rural conservation zones are making a significant contribution to improving flora and fauna biodiversity in line with the 30% by 2030 Roadmap but the Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 provides no evidence about their environment plantings and how these are increasing the shire’s biodiversity and restoring the plains grassy woodland ecosystem that existed across the shire before settlement. Photos show farms along Moffats lane Romsey 1986 versus 2025. Source: Patrick Francis.
2: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 makes no reference to any positive outcomes for biodiversity resulting from the 2018 ‘strategy actions’. This is at odds with Council’s Biolinks Boost and Community Climate Action (Environment) grants reports which show 14,799 indigenous species were planted by landcare and friends groups in 2024/25 (Appendix 1). While these reports provide no context for the plantings (many involve plant give-aways) in terms of longer term target areas and species health and prevalence outcomes on public and private land they at least acknowledge a contribution. It is interesting that the Environment Grants program is stated as aligning with the Council’s strategic goals including the 2018 Biodiversity Strategy, the Climate Emergency Plan and the Environment Strategy, but there is no data presented from the Project results to show what outcomes from the alignment have been achieved.
As for biodiversity outcomes achieved outside the landcare and friends groups receiving ‘Action grants’ there is no information. This means the efforts of individual landowners including those with Land for Wildlife registered properties, rural landcare groups participants, CMA projects participants, and Melbourne Water projects participants are unrecognised and if interrogated would have uncovered significant progress in biodiversity enhancement across the shire. It could have also used a web based tool such as i-Tree Canopy which can identify land and tree cover and estimate change over time.
3: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 provides no benchmarks for biodiversity as it currently exists for flora and fauna across the Shire. It’s Table 1 Fast Facts for Biodiversity contains no data on actual biodiversity indicators such as hectares of fenced off remnant vegetation, fenced off conservation and reafforestation plantings across the 33 Ecological Vegetation Classes known in the shire and their riparian zones. This data should be available from stakeholder groups who fund revegetation projects on private land while other data is available from satellite imagery based tools such as i-Tree Landscape and i-Tree Canopy which identify tree, shrub, pasture, and hard surface cover . Associate Professor Joe Hurley, RMIT University Centre for Urban Research used this tool to evaluate urban tree cover change across 151 local government areas (MRS was not involved) between 2016 and 2020.
As its default benchmark for Shire fauna health Table 1 references endangered species ‘likely to occur’ within Macedon Ranges shire based on “Threatened communities and species” listings under State (FFG Act) and Federal (EPBC Act) legislation (Appendix 1) without any data of these species presence across the shire’s land use zones. In contrast it provides no listing for increaser fauna species taking advantage of enhanced biodiversity from stakeholder revegetation projects across the shire, such as eastern grey kangaroos, wombats, koalas, echidnas, sugar gliders, reptiles, amphibians, and birds despite evidence available from land owners revegetation programs and from surveys conducted through fauna interest groups such as Bird Life Australia. Even negative data from Wildlife Victoria wildlife road kill statistics and Insurance company vehicle wildlife collision claims data which puts the Shire as number one for road kills is not simply a reflection of higher town populations more vehicle kilometres travelled on shire roads but an increase in wildlife population due to land use change in particular purchasing land for a rural lifestyle and living with nature as alternative land uses to farming.
4: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy makes no provision for recognising and rewarding biodiversity enhancement on private property apart from the rate rebate associated with a conservation covenant. Given the shire’s own data demonstrates (Rural Conservation Farming Zone survey 2019 and Farming Zone review 2020) a changing pattern of land use away from traditional livestock grazing and cropping towards conservation under lifestyle land ownership, a method of recording, verifying and acknowledging landowners contribution to nature repair in corridors and blocks is omitted.
Figure 3: Wildlife are replacing livestock on many properties across the shire’s farm and rural conservation zones as an increasing percentage of new owners of smaller properties opt for a lifestyle in harmony with nature. The increasing biodiversity living on these properties and replacing livestock is unrecognised in the Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030. Photo: Patrick Francis.
The Shire’s Planning Scheme 12.01-1L protection of biodiversity strategies even states “Enhance vegetation links, habitat corridors and stabilise waterways through encouraging revegetation”. But the Strategy has no area target for such links and corridors s to happen.
5: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy puts no onus on land developers to contribute to nature repair as part of their responsibility for developing greenfields estates. New estates lack conservation buffers of sufficient size and species diversity to build biodiversity close to where people live and to provide connectivity to public and private land conservation corridors outside town boundaries. Resident surveys show living close to nature is an important consideration for moving to shire towns.
Figure 4A: The draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 fails to address residential zone biodiversity enhancement by ignoring to state (or advocate to the Planning Minister) that residential estate developers be required to plant significantly wide (minimum 50m) biodiversity buffers on their own greenfields residential land along boundaries and water courses and that they are managed by the developer for 20 to 30 years. Photo shows the Lomandra greenfields residential estate had no developer land allocated for a biodiversity buffer along Knox road, with the developer providing a single row of a single tree species on the publically owned road verge. Photos: Patrick Francis.
Figure 4B: An effective Biodiversity Strategy would be advocating for minimum 50m wide diverse native plant environment buffers around proposed new housing developments (such as around Romsey) and endorsing a five year plan to encourage private landholders in the adjacent farm and rural conservation zones to link these buffers to existing farm biolinks (such as the Deep Creek Biolink). Source: Romsey Structure Plan 2024 MRSC.
Figure 4C: Without significant biodiversity buffers surrounding new housing estates like Lomandra Romsey, residents are denied the opportunity they provide for “improved health, wellbeing and quality of life” associated with experiencing wildlife and flora. Residents use local roads outside town boundaries as their source of experiencing nature but must take the risk of collision with a vehicle on these unsafe speed limit roads (80km/h posted and default 100km/h). Source: Infographic Homes for People and Wildlife, the Wildlife Trust UK 2018.
6: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 is one dimensional and fails to connect and include biodiversity nature repair with greenhouse gas emission reduction so the shire and the state can achieve their Net Zero 2050 target.
Infographic 2: Macedon Ranges shire has a large total CO2 emissions profile and to achieve Net Zero by 2050 will need nature repair and carbon credits to help offset them. Biodiversity Strategies up to and beyond 2030 will make an important contribution to offsetting 25% to 50% of current emissions depending on their adoption rate across pasture land in the farm and rural living zones. Source: Snapshotclimate.com.au
This target will be met in a large degree by CO2 offsets as per the Clean Energy Regulators environmental planting and reafforestation methodologies for carbon credits and its Nature Repair credits methodologies. These are increasingly being combined in on-farm projects as planting trees for CO2 abatements is recognised as a mechanism for enhancing biodiversity in-conjunction with nature repair. These crediting programs will become increasingly important for biodiversity enhancement particularly across the 85,000 hectare farming zone and the 47,000ha rural conservation zone and should be included as contributing to flora and fauna enhancement in the Draft Strategy with area targets for adoption by landowners up to 2030, 2040 and 2050.
Figure 5: CO2 abatement and biodiversity nature repair are complimentary but the Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 fails to make that connection. Koalas are frequent visitors to Moffitts Farm Romsey to browse hundreds of Manna gums (E.viminalis) and other eucalypt species planted in blocks connected by biolinks across the property since 1990 and which abate 150tonnes CO2 equivalent annually. Photo: Patrick Francis
7: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy should advocate to the Planning minister for a wider scope to the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme so it contributes to combating climate change threats rather than maintaining the status quo land uses. The Planning Schemes ‘Natural Resource Management Agriculture’ fixation on livestock grazing as its objective for land use particularly in eastern and northern parts of the shire highlights how out of date and unrealistic the Scheme is the era of climate change.
This is demonstrated by the statements:
* “The northern and eastern part of the shire …agricultural landscapes are used for grazing animal production and crop raising, and contribute to the character and economy of the shire.”
* “Continue to use land within the Agricultural Landscapes area for grazing animal production and crop raising”.
* “Protect agricultural land to support the continuation of agricultural activity”
* Purpose of the Farming Zone provides for the use of “land for agriculture” and to “encourage the retention of productive agricultural land” and to “encourage use and development of land based on comprehensive and sustainable land management practices”.
These are legitimate purposes but not on their own. Municipal Planning Strategy and Planning Policy Framework need to include nature repair and carbon farming as high priority land uses in balance with low emissions livestock grazing and cropping for combating climate change while increasing and protecting biodiversity across the shire. Farm land use purpose has moved on from these narrow focused statements in the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme to be far more environmentally relevant including management practices that minimise greenhouse gas emissions and remove CO2 from the atmosphere via environmental and reafforestation planting to address climate change and protect creek/river water quality with the co-benefit of increasing biodiversity and landscape amenity heading towards a plains grassy woodland.
In the same vein The Purpose for the Rural Conservation Zone while protecting natural resources of the area omits the zone’s scope for nature repair and carbon farming as legitimate alternatives to agricultural use as a means for addressing climate change.
It should also be noted that while the Planning Scheme promotes protection of farm zone land for livestock grazing and cropping it is out of date with respect to the economic and economies of scale required to profitably undertake these enterprises. The majority (87%) of properties in the farm zone are less 100 hectares and 51% of owners do not earn agricultural income from their properties. 41% own properties for lifestyle reasons (Source MRSC Farm Zone Survey 2017). Under these circumstances the Planning Scheme should provide the basis for alternative farm land uses such as nature repair and carbon farming which enhance the zones biodiversity while helping to achieve net zero CO2e emissions by 2050. They also have significant income generating potential for landowners via Clean Energy Regulator credit methodologies.
The Macedon Ranges Planning Policy Framework for Environmental and Landscape Value and Biodiversity Purposes fail to embrace the roles of nature repair and carbon farming have for achieving stated outcomes while at the same time helping to combat climate change by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. For instance under “Protection of biodiversity – Macedon Ranges” the first strategy states “Protect remnant vegetation on public and private land”. There is no reference to increasing environmental plantings to achieve nature repair and CO2 abatement. There is only one reference to encouraging revegetation of land and that is in the Cobaw Biolink where up to 10% of the property area to a maximum of 5 hectares is encouraged.
The Framework’s Objectives and Strategies are more about protecting existing native vegetation so “there is no net loss of biodiversity” which is admiral but not enough in the climate change era where natural disasters such as fires, floods and storms are increasing in intensity and frequency.
To address climate change, to increase biodiversity, to improve creek/river water quality and for the shire to make inroads into its total net greenhouse gas emissions of around 550,000 tonnes per year, the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme Framework should include a purpose target of up to 30% of farm and rural conservation zones being revegetated to restore something like its original plains grassy woodland condition by 2050.
8: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 does not include sufficient strategies, targets and responsibility to take action to reduce threats to the shire’s biodiversity. The most important predators of fauna across the shire – foxes and cats have no enforcement actions and targets in place to reduce their populations and habitat on private land or public land. The Centre for Invasive Species Solutions (CISS) stated on 16 December 2025 that “Feral cats and foxes kill more than 2.6 billion native animals every year and are a leading cause of mammal extinctions in Australia. They roam vast distances and prey on reptiles, birds, frogs and mammals – the scale of the problem is immense”.
Despite the state (CaLP Act 1994) and shire having laws which require private land owners to manage and eradicate regionally prohibited weeds (also referred to as noxious weeds and weeds of national importance) and pest animals within them, they do not seem to be enforced as evidenced by long-term weed infestations across some shire properties, figure 6A and 6B. This issue is exacerbated by the farming zone’s
* small property size 87% less than 100hectares,
* about 21% absentee owners and 35% visiting their properties less than once a month
* 51% of farm land owners do not earn agricultural income from their properties. (Source: MRSC Farming Zone Survey 2017)
Action seems to be only undertaken on the initiative of landcare groups who apply to council for funding to control weeds of national significance on members properties or adjacent private land. This is demonstrated in the shire’s 2024/25 Environment Group Project reports where six groups each received $1500 under ‘Strategic weed Partnership Program’.
Figure 6A: Until the Macedon Ranges shire includes targets for controlling and eradicating Weeds of National Importance on private and public property that provide breeding habitat for feral wildlife predators particularly foxes and cats, the Biodiversity Strategy to enhance and protect fauna particularly threatened species will be continually undermined. Photo shows gorse and blackberry left uncontrolled across approximately 9 hectares of private property for at least 10 years. Photos: Patrick Francis.
The recalcitrant and/or absentee landowners uninterested in participating in group weed and feral animal control programs undermine the 2025 – 30 Biodiversity Strategy. Unless the Strategy includes the extent of weeds of national significance infestations across the shire and targets to reduce them annually by 2030 either by collaboration or enforcement by the shire, native fauna on private properties and reserves where habitat has been repaired will continue to be devastated by foxes and cats. The lack of action to require recalcitrant landowners to act seems to contradict the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme where Protection of biodiversity (12.01-1L) states “Consider as relevant: Requiring environmental improvement works such as weed control, fencing of waterways, pest animal control and revegetation to protect existing environmental values, enhance biodiversity and improve ecological connectivity”. As figure 6B shows this is not happening.
Figure 6B: In many areas of the shire recalcitrant or absentee landowners are undermining nature repair efforts of their neighbours, while some road verges are ignored as potential biolinks. The Draft Biodiversity Strategy has no targets for addressing either issue.
The second most important predator of large native animals across the shire, vehicle drivers, is acknowledged but Council’s strategies to reduce road kills outlined in the Draft Strategy have failed to make any difference, on the contrary, road kills are increasing based on Wildlife Victoria and vehicle insurance company claims data. That’s because Council fails to acknowledge that what kills wildlife is not land use change per se but as Austroads (Guide to Road Safety Part 3: Safe Speed ManagementNovember 2025) explains kinetic energy transfer from the vehicle to the animal and the higher the speed and vehicle mass the greater the kinetic energy transfer increasing the animal mortality rate in a collision. Until Macedon Ranges shire is prepared to make submissions to the Transport Minister to include wildlife vehicle collisions as a factor to be used in making decision on setting and adjusting road speed limits in Transport Victoria’s (VicRoads) Speed Zoning Technical Guidelines 2021 and give Council the responsibility for setting speed limits on local roads under its management, road kills will continue the upward trajectory they have been on since 2016.
The road kill happening across the shire contradicts the Draft Biodiversity Strategy’s number 1 objective to “Protect existing biodiversity”. It also seems to contradict the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 which states on page 13 of the Draft “Councils have a legal obligation to consider impacts to biodiversity as per a 2021 amendment…. This consideration must include all potential impacts on biodiversity, including cumulative impacts and indirect impacts”.
Failure by the shire to take decisive, effective action to reduce vehicle legal speed limits on local roads under its management will undermine the 2025 – 2030 Biodiversity Strategy as a genuine blue-print for nature repair across the shire.
Figure 7: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 provides no effective solutions to the dichotomy between landholders increasing or restoring biodiversity and failure of the Council to protect the returning fauna from being killed by vehicles travelling at inappropriate default and posted speeds on local council managed access roads. Photos show the Moffats lane Sandy Creek bridge in 1990 and 2024 after 24 years of riparian zone nature repair to restore biodiversity. Road kills close to the bridge are frequent as wildlife exhibit their natural movement behaviours along protected riparian zones. Moffats lane has a default 100km/h speed limit while the Austroads Safe System Speeds guidelines nominate 30km/h as appropriate to ensure the collision kinetic energy transfer between the vehicle and animal is unlikely to cause death.
9: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 ignores recognition (just like the Draft 2025 Open Space Strategy) of biodiversity corridors on private land adjacent to council managed access roads outside town boundaries as an opportunity for residents to commune with the shire’s abundant and diverse flora and fauna. Having nature close to residents could be enhanced if the Strategy set target for increasing habitat along council managed road verges especially those regularly degraded by constant mowing by adjacent land owners and provided incentives to landholders to add biolinks within their boundaries. The Draft Strategy even states on page 32 “It is therefore important to Council that community members have easy access to the natural environment”.
The easiest access to the natural environment for many shire residents can be found along nearby local access roads where land owners have been participating in nature repair such as Land for Wildlife but these shared open spaces are ignored for their biodiversity value. What is surprising is that the Council promotes residents visiting its own 70 Managed Conservation Reserves which are a cost to rate payers to maintain and usually require a vehicle trip to visit them but does not recognise there is a no cost, no vehicle travel, healthy alternative to communing with nature – local council managed access roads.
Figure 8A: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 ignores the case for enhancing biodiversity on housing developers greenfields sites and on private land close to new housing estates so residents can walk or ride while at the same time commune with nature as an alternative to driving to Council managed conservation reserves. Photos show examples of fauna residents from the nearby Lomandra Estate Romsey have the opportunity to appreciate when walking, jogging or riding along council managed roads bordered in part by Land for Wildlife farms. Photos Patrick Francis
Figure 8B. Given the Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s recognises its residents demand for high environmental value open spaces its Draft Biodiversity strategy fails to place nature repair targets for local road verges and adjacent farm land outside town boundaries as spaces for residents to connect with nature as well as the opportunity for exercise and mental well-being.
10: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 provides no vision, no strategies and no targets for nature repair on verges along council managed and Transport Victoria managed roads. According to the MRSC Roadside Conservation Management Plan 2021 road verges embrace over 3000 hectares with the potential to be significant sources of rare native flora. Their contribution to nature repair biodiversity is close to zero along many roads in the East Ward. An obvious opportunity for nature repair is a joint initiative with Transport Victoria to revegetate in stages the Melbourne Lancefield road verge from the southern shire boundary near Clarkefield to Lancefield. This wide road verge has been biodiversity wasteland for at least 70 years with the only planted trees being pines, cypress and elms, some of which have died or are dying. There are very few biolinks connecting the verge to private land environmental plantings even along its most obvious riparian zone crossing at Bolinda creek.
Figure 9A: The Draft Biodiversity Strategy has no strategies or targets for implement nature repair along road verges such as Melbourne Lancefield road which have been biodiversity wastelands for generations.
The verge walking path between Romsey and Lancefield could be a vibrant biolink lined with environmental plantings to provide residents with the opportunity to walk between towns and connect with local flora and fauna. There is no evidence of the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme’s 12.01-1L protection of biodiversity strategy to “Promote restoration of vegetation in Romsey consistent with original ecosystem types (generally Plains Grassy Woodland)” along the wide verge path connecting the two towns. Much of verge is mown regularly which prevents natural restoration of grasses and forbes if any are left. Native woodland trees have died over many years and not replaced.
Figure 9B: The Melbourne Lancefield road verges between Romsey and Lancefield are sufficient in width to demonstrate to residents using its walking path what plains grassy woodland ecosystem biodiversity looks like. Top: Instead the verges remain a biodiversity wasteland with mown lawns, cypress hedges and elm trees. While the deciduous trees planted 50 plus years ago along the verge are important heritage, there is plenty of space to restore grasses, forbes and bush species below the power lines and woodland trees between the elms. Lower: A small number of adjacent landowners have planted biolinks which hit a native vegetation ‘brick wall’ at the verge. Photos: Patrick Francis.
As well, there are no biolinks connecting both towns with any biolinks such as the Deep Creek biolink which is just 2km from Romsey’s eastern boundary and 1.2km from Lancefield’s northern boundary, figure 9C.
Figure 9C: Romsey and Lancefield residents have no conservation corridors along roads they can use to walk or ride to any biolinks, particularly the nearby developing Deep Creek Biolink. The Draft Biodiversity Strategy is an opportunity to establish targets for road verge biodiversity corridors to link the two towns to the Biolink so residents have direct walkable access. Source: Biolinks Alliance
On local road verges, Knox road Romsey is an example, some adjacent landholders are destroying native flora particularly grasses by constant slashing/mowing. As well, the council’s own contractors are preventing remnant tree and shrub species from re-growing by regularly slashing the entire verge possibly as a means for containing the noxious weed gorse and for fire risk, figure 9D. Both the verge contract slashing and landholder mowing seem to be at odds with the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme 12.01-S ‘Protection of biodiversity Strategies which states “Promote restoration of vegetation in Romsey consistent with original ecosystem types (generally Plains Grassy Woodland)”. On both verges both the grasses and the woodlands are being gradually removed along these verges.
Figure 9D: Council managed road verges can be important refuges for local flora and fauna but seemingly not where future housing estates are planned. On Knox road Romsey verge adjacent to the Stage 2 residential development, council contractors regularly slash native tree and shrub species including Manna gums the preferred diet of koalas (left) presumably because slashing controls the gorse growing amongst the native plants as well as providing a perception around managing fire risk.. On the opposite verge (right) some adjacent landholders regularly mow the verge and remove any opportunity for native forbes and grasses, particularly kangaroo grass and wallaby grass to persist. Photos: Patrick Francis
Figure 9E: Remnant vegetation trees (left) such as this Manna gum on Moffats lane are old and dying. Without an active shire biodiversity strategy to protect verge natural revegetation some local access shire roadsides like the north end of Moffats lane become biodiversity waste land (right) due to regular slashing. Preventing remnant natural vegetation from re-establishing is an opportunity missed for no cost biolink biodiversity restoration. Photos: Patrick Francis
In summary, the Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 lacks any benchmark or audits of flora and fauna biodiversity across the Shires rural land use zones and residential zones. Without within Shire benchmarks and 2030 targets to aim for there is no way of evaluating if the Strategy will produce positive outcomes for biodiversity, just like the Biodiversity Strategy 2018 has seemingly failed to deliver any positive outcomes with unsubstantiated negative outcomes continuing according to the 2025 Draft Strategy’s authors.
For landowners who have participated in nature repair on their properties for years and those who are considering starting, the Draft Biodiversity Strategy 2025 – 2030 fails them in three important regards:
* It fails to provide any effective strategies to ensure the fauna moving into and out of new and/or repaired habitat will be protected from wildlife vehicle collisions on local council managed access roads and have a lower risk of predation by foxes and cats across rural and residential zones.
* It’s one dimension focus fails to make the complementarity connection between native vegetation enhancement and protection (nature repair, 30% by 2030 Roadmap) for biodiversity and CO2 abatement in vegetation, particularly trees, for combating climate change. It provides no vision how these two outcomes can be progressed together to meet the Net Zero 2050 target.
* It includes no targets using any metrics for the state of biodiversity across the shire’s land use zones by 2030 so participating residents cannot be assured their efforts contribute to making real difference to enhancing and protecting biodiversity and are not simply tokenism for meeting the Council’s own policy commitments and visions.
Appendix 1
Environment – Biolinks Boost Community Climate Action Grants, Project results 2024/25
Mount William Range Biolink Boost Project 1200 plants Private properties
Enhancing biodiversity within the Cobaw Biolink 4000 plants Private properties
Five Mile Creek Black Gum Biolink Enhancement Project 1924 plants Public land
Blackwells Paddock seed planting and revegetation 2025 500 plants Private properties
Understory revegetation for woodland birds 300 plants Public land
Baynton Sidonia Tree Project 2798 plants Private properties
Consolidating Campaspe River Rehabilitation 2656 plants Public land
Riddells Creek / Bruce Street Revegetation 650 plants Public land
Enhancing Deep Creek’s biodiversity 771 plants Public land
TOTAL 14,799 PLANTS
TOTAL GRANT FUNDING $47,121
2023/24 Projects 6000 plants
