More respect needed for bushland
In a recent public comment, the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation's Central Coast branch, Mark Snell, said he was pleased to hear that Gosford Council staff had started work on a formal plan of management for reserves containing rare bushland known as the Umina Coastal Sandplain Woodland endangered ecological community.
I am also pleased.
I cannot believe it has taken so long for this council to get moving on this very important issue that they have known about for decades and yet it does not really surprise me.
The council has been perennially entombed by its past visionless actions of the decades, and now carries out the present actions of an unimaginative, declining, geriatric council, attempting to act in an induced, stultified almost comatose, stupor of great antiquity.
Council should have an overall blanketing policy for rare and threatened ecological communities, and when an area is so identified, this policy automatically becomes active.
Australia has one of the worst track records of destruction of environmental flora and fauna, unique to this country, rare and highly valued in the natural world.
In this fine land of Australia, the flora and fauna have been given no respect by white man and still this lack of respect prevails.
The early settlers would say: "It is only bush".
Bulldoze it. Clear it. Burn it. Destroy it.
It would seem nothing has changed locally, while Gosford Council prevails.
So a bit more woodland will disappear for perhaps an artificial sports surface, or a bit of grass (exotic, of course, which is water hungry with roots burning in the heat of the high silica sands).
Whenever will the egocentric population wake up?
This is the driest continent on earth. The vegetation is part of the natural evolutional balance of water, and is part of the cycle.
No plants. No rain.
This continent is already well covered in deserts and only coastal strips and mountain ranges remain.
Now we will have more recreation and lose the rare and irreplaceable bushland, which is what keeps us all healthy, and just why people like to live here in the first place.
This loss will continue to contribute to the world climate change.
Shame council, shame.
Better, more efficient time management of existing recreation areas would be a help.
Many, many hours of the week, these areas exist in almost total abandonment or minimal use.
Community and time management is yet another avenue yet to come into the council arena.
Not to worry: we will have our recreation area, but we may not be able to run far because we will not have good clean air to breathe.
The groundwater may also provide less, but we will have our 'you beaut' recreation area.
Zoe Russell, Umina
23 Nov 2009