The Northern Beaches Council Biodiversity Planning Review prepared by SMEC includes:

• review of the currency and robustness of existing wildlife habitat/corridor and threatened entities mapping across the Northern Beaches Local Government Area (LGA). For reference purposes, the mapping Threatened Ecological Communities (TECs) and threatened species habitat, the ‘deferred lands’ which are subject to Warringah LEP 2000 are excluded from this review and are in a separate report (Deferred Lands Biodiversity Assessment – Stage 2)
• identification of appropriate methodologies to update, validate and consolidate existing wildlife habitat/corridor and threatened entities (flora and fauna species and communities) mapping using industry standards
• undertaking recommended desktop analysis and field validation studies
• development of consolidated and updated core habitat/biodiversity corridors and threatened entities spatial layers consistent across the Northern Beaches and fit for adoption in the NBC planning instruments.

The core habitat and biodiversity corridor layer has identified vegetation features which connect larger areas of remnant bushland to facilitate dispersal of wildlife and plant populations across the landscape. Map categories were broadly consistent with the urban biodiversity framework set out under the NSW Government Architect’s Greener Places Urban Green Infrastructure Guide (draft) (GANSW, 2020). This review identified a consolidated biodiversity corridor layer, incorporating core habitat areas and biodiversity corridor areas, suitable for adoption into the new Northern Beaches DCP.

The threatened entities (species and communities) layer includes selected threatened species records and habitat, and the likely pattern of distribution of TECs, as declared under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) and NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 (BC Act).

Northern Beaches Council (NBC) is reviewing its planning instruments and developing a new, integrated Local Environment Plan (LEP) and Development Control Plan (DCP) to guide its long-term land-use planning, including the definition of Conservation zones and provision of new biodiversity planning controls to protect native vegetation, wildlife habitat and connectivity, and threatened entities (threatened species, threatened ecological communities and threatened populations).

The results of the review have:

• identified significant areas of core habitat and a network of biodiversity corridors across the Northern Beaches LGA
• reviewed and identified important key biodiversity assets, particularly threatened entities listed under the BC Act, and the EPBC Act. These threatened entities include likely or confirmed occurrences of, or habitat for threatened species, populations and ecological communities. This review identified limited new extents of TECs, threatened flora species and their habitats.

The recommendations of the review include to update records and listings as new information becomes available and threatened species legislation is updated to refine the accuracy and comprehensiveness of mapped core habitat, biodiversity corridors and threatened entities within the Northern Beaches LGA. The mapping outputs of the current project should be updated as part of future reviews of the Northern Beaches LEP and DCP.

When reading the review, we want to know if you agree with the approach and criteria used in the review to identify and map core habitat areas, biodiversity corridor areas, threatened ecological communities, and threatened flora and fauna species habitat?