A walk with Mayor Clare

Glossy Update March 2021
by Desiré Gralton, Bob Carey, Maxine & Spencer Hitchen

Last week we invited Mayor Clare for a walk around the proposed development site and were impressed by her openness and willingness to hear our concerns. Glossy Team Sunrise members Glossy Bob, Maxine, Spencer, myself and my daughter Zoe spent some time walking around the five hectare area that is about to be destroyed.

The Uniting Church land at Grasstree Court, Sunrise Beach contains a forest of Allocasuarina littoralis (She-oak) trees. Our Glossies flock to this spot to eat, drink, roost and mate. They rely on these feed trees throughout the year along with other areas that form their home range. The site also contains other unique and irreplaceable flora and fauna, and the only way you can really comprehend the destruction is to walk around the perimeter of the site and imagine buildings instead of this unique ecosystem.

Glossy Bob and Spencer showed Mayor Clare the differences between the male and female Allocasuarina littoralis (She-oak) trees, explaining how you need both to produce the seeds the Glossies eat and to produce more trees. The female tree bears the fruit that the Glossies eat, but not all trees are favoured feed trees. They then showed Mayor Clare samples of orts from a favoured feed tree on the street, explaining how the Glossies pick out the seeds from the cone leaving the rest to fall to the ground as orts. Bob and Isobel Pert’s knowledge of the Glossies’ favoured feed trees has been established over decades of observations. They also know that our Glossies’ habitat has been reduced dramatically over the years due to development. They fear the worst if yet more of the Glossies’ important habitat is destroyed.

We let Mayor Clare know that our community feels there is too much uncertainty surrounding the success of offsets and that there is no science to prove this will work. This area also has cultural significance to the Indigenous people of this land, yet they have not been consulted about the destruction that is about to rip through their land. The soil to be removed from this land will be moved to a different site that also holds cultural significance for the First Nations people.

Clare said that Council would be willing to meet with the Church to discuss options, but that the initial approach would have to come from their side since all Council approvals had been granted .

Over the past couple of months, Maxine and Spencer have worked their way up the rungs of the Church ladder, raising awareness of the plight of the Glossies and urging the Church to adhere to its own Basis of Union which states that “The Uniting Church believes that God calls us into a particular relationship with the rest of creation, a relationship of mutuality and interdependence which seeks the reconciliation of all creation with God”.

We fully agree with the Church and believe we all need to do better. We urge the Uniting Church to listen to our community as we support Spencer in his petition asking the Church to save this important habitat. (See https://www.change.org/p/uniting-church-help-spencer-to-stop-the-church-to-save-our-glossies)

A previous petition also secured over 3150 signatures to date (see https://www.change.org/p/uniting-church-australia-save-our-sunrise-glossy-black-cockatoos) of supporters who do not agree with this development on the highly biodiverse land which is crucial to the survival of many different species including Glossy-Black Cockatoos, Koalas , Ground Parrots and many rare plant species as well.

We understand that approvals were made based on a historical decision to allocate that land to community use, and that the initial approval was granted by the amalgamated Sunshine Coast Council more than ten years ago.

There are, of course, good reasons for development applications to expire, and the extension of a decade old approval without further community consultation means that our community was never given the opportunity to have our say on a largely commercial residential development that is going to change our area for decades to come.

Last week also saw the release of an independent review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act which found that the act is pretty much useless.

“The EPBC Act is ineffective. It does not enable the Commonwealth to effectively protect environmental matters that are important for the nation. It is not fit to address current or future environmental challenges.
Cumulative impacts on MNES are not holistically addressed, as the Commonwealth and the States and Territories do not manage their environmental and heritage responsibilities in concert. The overall result for the nation is net environmental decline, rather than protection and conservation.”

We are seeing this failure of our Federal environmental laws at State and Local Government levels too, where our rich biodiversity is in steady decline due to the lack of an overarching strategy to protect vulnerable species.

Noosa may have claimed an enviable World Biosphere status, but here too local communities are fighting losing battles in their efforts to protect habitat destruction in our Shire.

Most notably, the Sundale development on McKinnon Drive at Tewantin resulted in the loss of seven hectares of prime Koala habitat, followed by 9 more hectares of significant Koala habitat loss at the Noosa Civic last week. Feedback on social media following this clearing clearly showed that the Noosa community was very unhappy with this destruction. Next to go will be the highly biodiverse habitat next to the RACV resort, more Koala habitat.

Many things have changed in our local and global community, since the initial approval was granted by another Council, and more still since further extensions were approved. Our knowledge has grown on the impacts of habitat destruction which leads to loss of biodiversity and extinction of species, especially vulnerable species like the Glossy Black-Cockatoo who rely on this habitat for their survival. Habitat loss also contributes to Climate Change and ultimately the death of our planet. It is irresponsible for us to continue to destroy habitat locally, when what we do here has far reaching consequences for our global communities.

A couple of years ago the local public schools had to introduce a strict catchment policy with more families trying to live near the educational and sports facilities in this area. We’ve experienced unprecedented fires and then COVID, which has changed the way we work and allowed more people to work from regional centres rather than cities. Some of these things would not have been factored in when this development was approved.

Other concerns we raised about the development during our 30 minute walk with Mayor Clare:

• How will the already congested road network cope with increased traffic during the building phase but also on completion with extra residents, service staff, visitors, etc.
• Bushfire risks, which are predicted to worsen with Climate Change. Habitat destruction contributes to Climate Change.
• What impact will the clearing of such a large area of land and replacing it with cement and roofs have on the temperature of the whole surrounding area? It’s interesting to note that Blue Care is working with the University of Sunshine Coast on a research project named Green Infrastructure for Mitigating Heat Stress in Aged Care Facilities where researchers will investigate the impacts of greenery, like shrubs and trees on aged care facilities and their residents with the aim to develop a model Heat Adaptation Plan for Queensland’s aged care industry. Our community is more than aware how important trees are to our health and keeping us cool.
• This area was designated to be for our community, however the majority of this site will be a commercial residential development. Will our local elderly be able to afford to buy into this facility? Is this really addressing any needs for our local elderly residents? If prices are at market value, will this drive our elderly out of their own community to be replaced by people from further afield that can afford to buy here. Destruction of habitat we all love for profit.
• Do we need to rethink the somewhat dated design of retirement villages like these, especially viewed through the COVID lens and further tinted with the damning findings from the Royal Commission into Aged care.
• The lack of affordable housing and how this should be factored in with any new development, especially when precious native habitat is ’sacrificed’. We are not sold on the idea that the proposed Sapphire, Ruby and Diamond facilities reflect best the housing crisis experienced by so many of our workers and families. Both overseas and in Gympie there has been great success with combining the needs of the local communities’ elderly with the needs of the younger community to give great results.
• What impact will the development have on the Burgess Creek catchment, due to runoff from the site especially with the use of poisons and fertilisers in the gardens.
• What about the impact of light and noise pollution on the remaining Wallum that is known habitat for Vulnerable Wallum frog species and the Eastern Ground Parrot.
• Where will all the other Woodland birds go when the forest is removed? They are also in
  decline from habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity and climate change.
• We are concerned about the logistics of trucking 200mm of top soil from the five
  hectares at the Grasstree Court site to the offset site at Wallum Lane.

Our community is asking the Uniting Church to please listen to our community. We do not support this development on this highly biodiverse land which is crucial to the survival of many different species including Glossy-Black Cockatoos, Koalas, Ground Parrots and many rare plant species as well. We are asking the Uniting Church decision makers to join us on a walk as our Mayor has done, so that we can show you what you are destroying before it is too late for all of us and our planet.

We thank Mayor Clare for taking the time out of her busy schedule to take a walk at the site with us and listen to our community’s concerns. We appreciate our Mayor Clare has opened the door for discussion. We need the Church to now approach our Council to change the outcome of this development.