{"id":484206,"date":"2026-02-19T01:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484206\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T01:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:13:09","slug":"property-developers-spark-anger-over-plan-to-clear-woodland-home-to-baudins-and-carnabys-black-cockatoos-endangered-habitats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484206\/","title":{"rendered":"Property developers spark anger over plan to clear woodland home to Baudin\u2019s and Carnaby\u2019s black cockatoos | Endangered habitats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Property developers in Perth<\/a> plan to bulldoze an endangered banksia ecosystem used by threatened black cockatoo species, and conservationists have warned the damage cannot be mitigated by proposed offsets.<\/p>\n

The developers want to replant the banksia ecosystem within a different type of protected woodland \u2013 a proposal that a leading botanist said was doomed to fail.<\/p>\n

The woodland to be bulldozed for three housing developments is home to species including the threatened Baudin\u2019s and Carnaby\u2019s black cockatoos.<\/p>\n

Prof Kingsley Dixon, a restoration expert and the national expert on the ecosystem \u2013 known as the banksia woodlands of the Swan coastal plain \u2013 said he had \u201cdeep concerns\u201d about the proposal to offset clearing by trying to create banksia woodlands from scratch within another woodland type in protected reserves around Perth.<\/p>\n

Dixon said the proposals put forward for the three developments by the environmental consultancy Emerge Associates were effectively \u201cforcing one system into another\u201d, and it was unlikely a banksia ecosystem could be created that would match the diversity of the cleared sites.<\/p>\n

Wattle birds take advantage of the Western Australian banksias. Photograph: Nigel Jarvis\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an example, would it be appropriate for the rare grasslands of New South Wales to be knocked over and [to compensate] you stick them into the Blue Mountains?\u201d he said. \u201cOr we take the loss of Kosciuszko alpine species and we put something on the flats near Sydney?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dixon said he had been working with restoration teams across Perth on banksia woodland for 40 years and \u201cwe still can\u2019t make one hectare\u201d of the ecosystem from scratch. He said they had tried to restore existing patches of banksia woodland and been unable to bring it back to its original state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not simple gardening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

Biodiversity offsetting is meant to compensate for the environmental damage caused by development by providing an equal or greater environmental benefit elsewhere. But offsetting has been beset with problems, including that promised offsets are sometimes never delivered or they fail to adequately compensate for the environmental loss.<\/p>\n

Like other capital cities around the country, Perth is facing a housing crunch, with the median housing price in the WA capital surpassing the $1m mark.<\/p>\n

Some new developments areplacing increased pressure on already threatened ecosystems such as the banksia woodland.<\/p>\n

Species in the woodland include herbaceous plants, flowering woody shrubs and native sedges. A canopy storey contains banksias and eucalypts.<\/p>\n

In addition to threatened Baudin\u2019s and Carnaby\u2019s black cockatoos, the habitat also supports insect communities and animals such as the honey possum.<\/p>\n

Dixon said it was the collective mix of species that created the \u201cbroader ecological balance\u201d for a resilient banksia woodland ecological community \u201cwith a unique assemblage of species that are not represented elsewhere\u201d.<\/p>\n

Of the three housing developments \u2013 two in the south of Perth and one in the north \u2013 one was approved by the federal environment department last yearand the other two are under assessment.<\/p>\n

Most of the offset options put forward by Emerge Associates would involve trying to create banksia woodland from scratch within stands of tuart woodland in public reserves. Tuart, if it meets the right conditions, is a critically endangered ecosystem in its own right.<\/p>\n

Dixon said the tuart woodlands had the wrong soil and canopy type to support a true banksia woodland. He said the two ecosystems had some common species and it was possible for a simple type of banksia woodland to exist within a tuart woodland, but not the same type of complex banksia ecosystem that was being cleared.<\/p>\n

He said that meant the offsets proposed were unlikely to result in a like-for-like environmental benefit and there would be a net loss of banksia woodland as it was pushed closer to the critically endangered category.<\/p>\n

The Australian Conservation<\/a> Foundation\u2019s national biodiversity policy officer, Brendan Sydes, said the proposals highlighted concerns that offsetting, rather than being a last resort, had become a tool to facilitate development at the expense of vulnerable species and ecosystems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese examples demonstrate that there\u2019s an overreliance on offsets and an optimistic assumption about the ability to recreate ecosystems when in many cases the answer should be \u2018no, don\u2019t destroy the habitat\u2019,\u201d Sydes said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to the point where there\u2019s so little left that the priority should be protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the passage of amendments to Australia\u2019s national environmental laws last year, detailed rules for offsets are under development.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s critical that it delivers a clampdown on when offsets can be used, and that new rules and offsets funds don\u2019t actually end up acting as habitat destruction accelerators by facilitating inappropriate use of biodiversity offsets,\u201d Sydes said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the federal environment department said in the case of the housing development it had approved, it had worked closely with the environmental consultancy to \u201censure the offset is achievable and aligns with a banksia [threatened ecological] community that is known to coexist with tuart woodlands\u201d.<\/p>\n

They said that project was approved with \u201crigorous\u201d conditions to deliver and monitor the offset.<\/p>\n

They could not comment on the two developments still under assessment. They said federal offset policy did not prevent offsets on land that was publicly owned.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Emerge Associates said there had been a public consultation process for each development, including their proposed offsets, and public feedback was reflected in the assessment documentation.<\/p>\n

They noted some of the developments were still being considered by the department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Property developers in Perth plan to bulldoze an endangered banksia ecosystem used by threatened black cockatoo species, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-484206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}