Rare
woodlands
to be bulldozed
Southern Highlands Express
Frensham School is going ahead with plans to clear more than 200 trees from the endangered Southern Highlands Shale Woodlands species to make way for environmental education cabins.
The private school recently folded to community requests for council-mandated consultation meetings - offering three online sessions for members of the public, alumni and parents to attend.
Sarah Cains, a Frensham Old Girl attended two of three meetings and said she found them “most unsatisfactory”.
“We were given just 24-hours notice for the meeting and so we scrambled to get a coherent collection of questions together,” she said.
Community consultation was a specific condition made by the suspended Wingecarribee Shire Council in September 2020 when it deferred a determination on the development application.
Frensham has declined numerous invitations from interested community groups to discuss the matter, among them WinZero Wingecarribee, before deciding to take the case to the Land and Environment Court.
Attendees of the online sessions were required to submit questions to the panel via a chat tool. Frensham then selected questions from the list and responded.
It was unclear at the end of the meeting what had and hadn’t been answered.
“Mostly they spoke about the mission of Winifred West and the school’s environmental ethos but we know that because we grew up under that ethic,” Ms Cains said.
In the Biodiversity Development Assessment Report prepared for Frensham’s development in 2020, the species of Shale Woodlands set to be chopped are identified as a “Serious and Irreversible Impact due to the rapid rate of decline and a small population size”.
Within the 10,000 hectares surrounding Frensham, there is 1267 hectares of Shale Woodlands. The works will impact 4 hectares.
The offset requirement for the Frensham development would require 70 ecosystem credits for removal of Southern Highlands Shale Woodlands species and 70 species credits for Koala, amounting to more than $312,000.
However, legislation restricts offsets where a negative impact on the environment can be avoided or minimised.
“It’s not that we’re against them building cabins for kids to get close to nature,” Ms Cains said.
“We want them to do this project but it’s the right project in the wrong place.”
Ms Cains told the Southern Highlands Express that she had seen reports that there were multiple potential sites on Frensham’s 100ha property that were considered for the development.
“The carefully designed proposal creates opportunities for Frensham students to engage meaningfully in learning about and caring for this unique area without adverse ecological impact,” a statement on Frensham’s website said.
Frensham did not respond to requests for comment.
“The time for humans to just keep pushing nature out of the way and saying we want this patch – it’s over,” said Ms Cains who has been a bush carer on Mt Gibraltar for 28 years, looking after the Southern Highlands Shale Woodlands Forest.
The matter will proceed to hearing in the Land and Environment Court on October 12.
By Madeleine Achenza
Sarah Cains