‘Scenic management tourist road corridor’- Not exactly an exciting collection of words, but a section of the planning code that is of great interest to many residents of Hillwood.
Under George Town Council’s Interim Planning Scheme 2013 (the Scheme), land within 100m of the frontage to the East Tamar Highway falls within a Scenic Management – Tourist Road Corridor.
Any development within this corridor “must be fully screened by existing vegetation or other features” when viewed from the Highway (E7.6 of the Scheme). If the development will not be fully screened, it must be advertised and the public given an opportunity to comment on the impacts of the proposal.
As explained in the Scheme, the purpose of this provision is to “ensure that siting and design of development protects and complements the visual amenity of defined tourist road corridors”. This is particularly important in a municipality that actively promotes tourism.
At the present time, a proposal to clearfell approximately 28 hectares of land beside the East Tamar Highway at Hillwood is being considered by the Forest Practices Authority. A representative of the landholder has stated that the native bush will be cleared to make way for hydroponic strawberry production under polytunnels.
The land proposed for clearing is within an identified priority habitat area under the Scheme. However, if the Forest Practices Plan is certified, the clearing will be treated as a permitted development by Council and will not be subject to public scrutiny. The priority habitat listing will do little to protect this area.
Many Hillwood residents are concerned that the clearfelling will not only remove important habitat for endangered spotted quolls, bandicoots and green and gold frogs, but will also mean the polytunnels cannot be screened from the East Tamar Highway.
At a meeting with Hillwood residents on Monday 26 September, the Forest Practices Officer preparing the FPP advised that a 40m vegetation buffer will be retained along the East Tamar Highway to provide screening for the tourist road corridor. Council representatives have said that the proposed buffer would be consistent with the latest (not yet publicly available) iteration of the Hillwood Structure Plan.
Despite these assurances, neither the Forest Practices Officer nor Council have provided any evidence, modelling or on-ground assessment to justify their decision that 40m would be sufficient to meet the requirements of the Scheme and “protect and complement the visual amenity” of the area.
This bushland has been recognised as a priority habitat area, and the intact vegetation currently protects the significant amenity of Hillwood for residents and enhances the experience of tourists.
Given the valuable role played by the vegetation, the residents of Hillwood expected that more rigour would be applied to a decision to remove it.
http://georgetown.tas.gov.au/george-town-council-interim-planning-scheme
*Penny Allen is a resident of Hillwood in the Tamar Valley. Like many residents of Hillwood, Penny loves the bushland setting and views of the Tamar river. Penny would hate to see the entrance to her suburb blighted by polytunnels.
EARLIER on Tasmanian Times …
• Petition: Stop Hillwood clearfell
• Judith King in Comments: … It is ironic that one article on TT at the moment is about the need to save quolls and another is about FPA planning to clearfell an area where vulnerable species such as quolls live! Councils, Authorities and government appear to function in a mutually exclusive manner where decisions re the environment are concerned …
• John Maddock’s comment on this article HERE: … And from the section headed Boat Builders: “Wooden Boat Building is a traditional Huon activity. The industry is currently enjoying a world-wide revival of interest. The Inaugural (biannual) Australian Wooden Boat Festival held in Hobart during November 1994 was a major success. The industry is labour intensive, high value-adding and requires small quantities of high-quality special timbers. Current forestry practises are of great concern as Celery Top Pine is being logged at an unsustainable rate and will no longer be locally available within twenty years.“ Note the date of the document: 1996. Who’da thunk it! JV
