TO: The Director,
Conservation Incentives and Design Section
Dept Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities
GPO Box 787
CANBERRA ACT 2601
SUBMISSION:
DRAFT NATIONAL WILDLIFE CORRIDORS PLAN
The Nelson Coastcare Inc. volunteer’s group perspectives on the welcome Draft National Wildlife
Corridors Plan are as follows:1. That the corridor’s plan as it specifically applies to our region, the Discovery Bay karst
geomorphological bioregion, takes into account the broader influences of whole of
landscape impacts on what will be assumed to be designated as the Habitat 141 corridor,
(based on the longitudinal meridian which commences at the coast and continues through
the Nelson area along the S.A.-Victorian border into NSW). The reasons are:
a)
The coastal interdunal Long Swamp, Glenelg Estuary and Holloway’s Swamp wetlands
biodiversity is interdependently connected in maintaining biodiversity values, these
being singularly dependent on the necessary volumes of groundwater flowing from the
Glenelg Plain hinterland to this coastal region;
b) The advent in the past two decades of hundreds of thousands of hectares of Blue Gum
plantations in the hinterland (additional to the considerable Pine plantations established
in the coastal areas during the 1960’s) and the recent prolonged drought, has
diminished the volume of upwellings from the unconfined aquifers which feed into the
wetlands. Swan Lake (further east of Lake Monibeong) has dropped around 6 metres in
the past two decades (recent personal communication, Gavin Cerini, retired DSE
manager of Discovery Bay Coastal Park 1980’s-1990’s). Long Swamp has all but lost its
surface free water and is now little more than a grassy-looking sedgeland, its peripheral
areas of Woolly Tea-tree (Leptospermum lanigerum) vegetation communities supporting
rare and threatened species such as orchids, are being displaced by the aggressive and
phytotoxic hybrid Coast Wattle (Acacia longifolia ssp. sophorae);
c) Eel Creek, which acts as the connection between Lake Monibeong and the Glenelg
Estuary (it runs alongside Long Swamp on its coastal edge), despite good rains in the
previous two years, barely flows (it is known that Eel Creek can flow irregularly
depending on whether sufficient rainfall and added upwelling overflows help to keep it
running);
d) A drain cut in previous decades of land development still allows any surplus outflow
from Lake Monibeong out to sea (i.e. Noble’s Rocks outlet) instead of into Eel Creek.
With the more intensive land use and land management practices, any such drains need
to be blocked off to allow water to accumulate again into the main Long Swamp
complex to restore this wetland’s former biodiversity complement.
The Nelson Coastcare Inc members request that the Draft Wildlife Corridor Plan take into
account the need to restore the natural values of these precious, nationally significant
wetlands to the limit of practical feasibility, to ensure that the Habitat 141 corridor, when
designated and implemented, serves its purpose effectively in enabling opportunity for
biodiversity to move, to be resilient in the face of land management and climate changes
and to be able to evolve without undue compromise.
Yours sincerely
Leila Huebner
Nelson Coastcare Inc. project co-ordinator