Garigal Landcare has been working for over 15 years for the restoration of habitat around Garigal National Park on Sydney's Northern Beaches. During that short timespan we fought many times against the destruction of highly valuable bushland and learned that our laws are not strong enough to protect threatened species or endangered ecological communities.

In our on ground work we also discovered unmapped locations of threatened species and despite great efforts still worry about their chances for survival in the future.

We draw on our own experiences from our environment...

A good number of residents from this area clearly remember Koalas in the eucalypts on the side of their street, Southern brown bandicoots in their bushland, Bandi- bandi snakes in their backyard and the concern they had for the safety of their chickens because of the regularly visiting tiger quoll. Now these animals have disappeared, chickens are only attacked by foxes, the 'koala crossing' sign on Forest Way seems nostalgic as the last koala was seen here about 20 years ago.. However the area is still extraordinarily biodiverse and all efforts to protect our biodiversity are necessary.

With a normal 'background extinction' rate calculated to be for mammals roughly .25 per million species-years, a species should disappear about every 700 years. Here in our local bushland three mammal species are or are just about gone: the New Holland mouse, the tiger quoll or spotted tail quoll and the Southern brown bandicoot. Other species we lost in the recent past are the platypus and the giant dragonfly.

The inadequacy in accounting of fauna all together is alarming as Invertebrates are nearly 100 percent ignored, despite their often critically vital roles in our ecosystems. The role of pollination is best known and already well exploited by farmers contracting bee keepers to hire their bee work force for crop pollination.

Another critical role of invertebrates is helping to break down dead material and recycling nutrients and making good soil for farming. Again commercially this is already exploited with worm pee being offered for sale for gardens.

'Silent spring ' the environmental classic alerted us to the role of invertebrates as Ne essay parts in the food chain and the list of vital roles of invertebrates is growing the more we care to observe and study them.

However it is great to have this inquiry concentrating on our vertebrate fauna. Threatened fauna species like the Black Bittern, regularly encountered at a freshwater swamp adjacent to Narrabeen Lagoon and protected under international obligations had their habitat destroyed by Ausgrid widening access to power lines. The Black Bittern habitat was no secret and we managed to to save some parts from destruction, but the access to the power lines could have continued to be managed from the adjoining street rather than requiring a new path being cut directly under the line or perhaps even a translocation of the pole be considered?

Critical habitat for the giant borrowing frog occurs in a location at Cromer on 'Crown' land. A track passes through that location and despite signage forbidding bike use mountain bike riders and especially trail bike riders regularly go there. This has been reported to police, Rangers and EPA but nothing has changed.

The local bushland also contains in a few locations Duffys Forest Ecological Community ( DFEC), an endangered ecological community under NSW legislation. It was widely believed that its listing would provide for its protection. However with the local member becoming Minister for Planning and hence gaining the right to declare anything he thinks suitable as a 'State Significant Project' or 'State Significant Infrastructure' , over 10ha of DFEC were recently annihilated including over 4 ha of Powerful owl habitat, some being other endangered species habitat and evidence of migrating through swift parrots being collected. On top of this, the land was a critical and most vulnerable part of a Priority 1 wildlife corridor but it had to go to make place for a hospital and roads.

Many aspects in this process reflect the failure of our system to protect for the survival of our endangered fauna, endangered flora and our endangered ecological communities.

1. The powers of the Minister seem excessive. The Northern Beaches hospital was only wanted by some medical experts and a huge number of residents opposed the project (over 700 submissions opposing this project were submitted and most stated grave environmental impact as the major reason). And being a medical practitioner myself, I know that even in the health sector the ministers view was not hugely greeted. Many of my GP colleges do not view the new hospital as a positive health outcome as it will require the closure of the two existing public hospitals ( Manly hospital, Mona Vale hospital). In short, the environmental vandalism for this development would never have been able to occur but for the minister. To balancing between priorities of different portfolios eg environment vs health should be done with greatest care, not by an individual person. 2. The overall environmental damage by this development is massive as it will lead to the local extinction of many species and certainly a large proportion of an endangered community. To destroy the remnants of Frenchs forest with its unique flora and fauna including carpets of orchids and many rarely encountered plants, mammal or bird occupied tree hollows, powerful owl nest and a resident swamp wallabies with joey to name few is one part but the new hospital and roads also ripped one of the most important wildlife corridors apart. This will lead to further local flora and fauna extinctions in the adjacent Manly Dam catchment. And again, I like to reflect on the value of wildlife in an area so close the Sydney's CBD. Swamp wallabies, which by visitors are usually thought of as kangaroos, the quintessential Australian marsupial and these days quite often encountered and admired at Manly Dam, have now lost there wildlife corridor connection to the northern bushland to Garigal National Park and are most likely to go extinct. 3. The quality of assessments for the above mentioned State Significant Project was very poor and HEAL (Health, Environment, Access, Locality) a local community group commissioned ecological consultants P&J Smith to re- survey the bushland. Their worries were confirmed. At a single site visit P&J Smith documented 25 additional flora species and 8 additional fauna species. SMEC consultants had done the survey for the government and had visited several times, but despite repeated sittings by locals were not even able to evidence ( eg droppings ) of the swamp wallaby and refused to admit it being there. Ironically during construction WIRES was called to rescue a swamp wallaby out of the fenced area when the bulldozers cleared the last few trees. To witness this scenario and having the review of the EIS makes it hard to believe in the reliability of any EIS commissioned by the Government for the purpose of destruction. Our group has lost its confidence in the State government's pursue of receiving accurate and good quality EIS assessments. 4. Offsets are seen as a fair way to destruction. We have never quite understood how this view could be achieved. In our eyes it is like loosing somewhere your good skin is meant to be remediated by looking and caring for a scar somewhere else and this being superior to the undamaged good skin. However even if one were to accept the offset methodology as fair and reasonable, the government's approach for offsetting for the Northern Beaches hospital was a sham. The project was developed in two stages and any protection or enhancement of any natural environment elements was part of the second stage. That meant destruction to go ahead without to any attempts to lessen the impact or a plan for offsetting. No application of the precautionary principle was attempted. However we have since new legislation, which is even weaker than the previous laws back in 2013/ 14. We understand now the simple pay money in a fund approach is seen as appropriate to make up for environmental destruction and any requirement for the precautionary principle has been abandoned. We disapprove of this approach and do not comprehend how anyone could believe this will help fauna, flora or ecosystem protection. 5. Climate change is posing extra pressures on many species, especially here in Australia where ecological niches are often quite restricted. To allow for escape often the opportunity to go up does not exist for long and only migration to the south is an option. If wildlife corridors are disrespected as in the above hospital/ roads scenario our fauna as no chance to migrate and is swiftly pushed into extinction. Wildlife corridors require highest protection and rehabilitation as for example via over and underpasses of roads. 6. Many people in my surrounds feel deeply upset about the decline in species and the destruction of our environment. Many have told me avoiding to drive to Frenchs Forest and having to look into another direction to cope. Through my medical practice I know the surprising frequency of depression and anxiety. Nature exposure and especially presents of native animals is a great remedy for those conditions and the environmental destruction is hence depriving us from those healing qualities. not bringing health to us humans either.

We feel the State government is not enacting our laws adequately. Neither the implementation of the EPBC Act nor its own old TSC act, nor the new legislation will cease the extinction crisis. We request that the federal government demonstrates leadership and becomes more proactive in actions to slow down the faunal extinction crisis.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this important topic.

Conny Harris

President Garigal Landcare