Palerang
Palerang Snapshot 2008
This "snapshot" profile celebrates a recent environmental initiative within this LGA.
Maximising the environmental benefits of rural residential development
Urban development is often viewed as having negative environmental effects. However, long-term benefits may frequently be overlooked. The question of balancing costs and benefits for the best overall outcome is far from academic near larger settlements, along the coast, and around the region’s biggest city, Canberra, and its neighbour Queanbeyan.
In Palerang Council area, east of Canberra, there is considerable rural-residential development in the Wamboin and Bywong areas where large rural properties have been subdivided into rural lifestyle blocks, typically 2-15 hectares in size.
Some aspects of these developments are seen as environmentally negative: more roads causing more pollution and native fauna fatalities, dams reducing runoff to waterways, and more buildings impacting on the visual landscape. However, there have also been significant environmental improvements. In most places, the subdivided properties were old grazing land of relatively low agricultural value, which had suffered from tree clearing and overgrazing, causing soil erosion and loss of biodiversity.
Palerang Council has attempted to facilitate appropriate redevelopment, leading to improvements including: regeneration of native grasses and trees; decreased weed problems due to reduced grazing pressures and more intensive land management. There is replanting of native vegetation particularly trees and shrubs and increased permanent aquatic habitat provided by farm dams, albeit at the cost of reduced stream flows. In some places, there are now pockets of higher value agricultural production, such as grapes and olives.
In increasing residential densities in rural areas, the minimisation of environmental costs, and maximisation of environmental benefits, including rehabilitating past mistakes, is neither an easy nor an automatic process. Getting it right is vital since residential pressure in rural areas will increase.
The experiences in Palerang Council area may provide important lessons for us all.
