New guidelines released by the federal government are providing developers and architects with more specific advice for project planning in environmentally sensitive areas.
The new advice will help the industry successfully plan projects around nationally protected environments and species, potentially speeding up the assessment process.
The range of new threatened species and ecological communities policy statements have been designed to help determine whether a project is likely to have a significant impact and need to be referred to the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
“These policy statements provide information on a diverse range of protected species, including the growling grass frog, black-throated finch, golden sun moth, and spiny rice-flower,” the department’s manager of strategic approvals and legislation, Mark Flanigan, said.
“Making the basis for our decisions more transparent is good for both developers and the environment. This is a work in progress and over time we will produce more policy statements covering a range of species,” Flanigan said.
More policy statements are under preparations, including striped legless lizard, water mouse, Murray cod, Macquarie perch, northern quoll, and swift parrot.
Environmental scientist at Aurecon Canberra, Cormac Farrell, said the guidelines are invaluable in project planning.
“We do environmental assessments for a range of projects including roads and infrastructure, and routinely use the guidelines, which we find really useful,” he said.
“They provide detailed information on the environmental values we need to focus on, not only saving us time and effort, but also ensuring better results by enabling us to tailor environmental solutions to each project.”
Matters of national environmental significance are: world and national heritage sites, wetlands of international importance, nationally threatened species and ecological communities, migratory species, Commonwealth marine areas, and nuclear actions.
The new policy statements are available here.
