{"id":712923,"date":"2026-07-27T02:55:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T02:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/712923\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T02:55:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T02:55:35","slug":"neighbours-create-40-hectare-wildlife-corridor-amid-sydneys-expanding-urban-fringe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/712923\/","title":{"rendered":"Neighbours create 40-hectare wildlife corridor amid Sydney’s expanding urban fringe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lesley Hulbert remembers when the bird-filled forest behind her home bordering a Sydney national park went quiet.<\/p>\n

Bushfires raged just minutes away from her Kurrajong Heights home for months at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020.<\/p>\n

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Lesley Hulbert remembers her backyard went quiet after the 2019-2020 bushfires.\u00a0 (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

The gang-gang cockatoos, koalas and wallabies that used to frequent her backyard seemed to disappear.<\/p>\n

“I used to find lots of koala droppings on the property. All that stopped,” Ms Hulbert said.\"a<\/p>\n

Wallabies, koalas and possums are among the many animals Lesley Hulbert has seen on her property in trail camera footage. (Supplied: Lesley Hulbert)<\/p>\n

In the last couple of years, she has seen possums and wallabies returning, captured on trail camera footage set up near a pond she built with her husband.<\/p>\n

Now she is worried the quiet will come again, not from fires but from development encroaching on the belt of national parks that surround Sydney’s north-west Hawkesbury region.<\/p>\n

She has banded together with several neighbours to form a 40-hectare wildlife corridor, connecting the Wollemi and Blue Mountains national parks.<\/p>\n

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Lesley Hulbert has noticed possums returning to her property in the past couple of years.\u00a0 (Supplied: Lesley Hulbert)<\/p>\n

“Even the people who live here don’t know what we’ve got,” Ms Hulbert said.<\/p>\n

“But governments certainly don’t, and developers absolutely don’t.”<\/p>\n

One of those neighbours is Polly Bennett, whose property of Sydney turpentine ironbark forest makes up 30 hectares of the wildlife corridor.<\/p>\n

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The neighbours entered into a formal agreement with Community Environment Network to protect the 40-hectare wildlife corridor behind their properties. (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

Making the wildlife corridor involved identifying native flora, removing invasive species and keeping native species on the site intact.<\/p>\n

Ms Bennett wants to see it kept as a wildlife corridor in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

“It’s our biodiversity. That’s our web of life,” Ms Bennett said.<\/p>\n

The pair and several other neighbours entered into a formal agreement through the Community Environment Network’s Land for Wildlife program, which assists landowners with conservation.<\/p>\n

Historical development applications push Sydney’s boundaries<\/p>\n

Kurrajong residents like Ms Hulbert and Ms Bennett are concerned about the impact of developments that push into the forested edges of Sydney’s fringe.<\/p>\n

Just a five-minute drive from the corridor in Kurrajong Heights is a 40-hectare development that recently cleared habitat trees for eight residential blocks.<\/p>\n

The development application, approved in 2010, features a koala habitat assessment that claimed there was no evidence or sightings of koalas in the area.<\/p>\n

However, Stephanie Clay, who has lived near the development for seven years, says the area has always been known as koala habitat.<\/p>\n

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Lesley Hulbert and Polly Bennett are concerned about developments at Sydney’s urban fringe.\u00a0 (ABC News: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n

“Even in 2008 they would’ve only had to have asked a few neighbours, and they would’ve been told there are koalas here,” Ms Clay said.<\/p>\n

“Even spend a night, you’ll hear them growling in the trees.”<\/p>\n

Neighbouring this development is a proposal for a 126-hectare tourism precinct that will clear a 100m buffer zone on all sides.<\/p>\n

The Island Oasis project, which is currently being assessed as a state significant development, was approved by council in 1989.<\/p>\n

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Residents have recently sighted koalas in trees near the reactivated development.\u00a0 (Supplied: Stephanie Clay)<\/p>\n

702 ABC Sydney approached the developer Merc for comment but did not receive a response before the deadline.<\/p>\n

A scoping report for the project by PPD Planning Consultants said despite the age of the approval, “the development consent has not lapsed, as sufficient physical work was done on the entry road under a condition of consent”.<\/p>\n

A Hawkesbury City Council spokesperson said it was developing a koala management strategy that included mapping where koalas have established colonies and where they were likely to be living.<\/p>\n

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A masterplan concept image from a State Significant Development application for The Island Oasis Tourist Facility in Kurrajong Heights.\u00a0 (Supplied: Mountain Island Pty Ltd)<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said the council could not withdraw development consent if the developer was acting on what they were permitted to do.<\/p>\n

“The Environmental Planning and Assessment Act requires that once an approval is granted, an applicant has a period of time (specified in the development consent) in which they need to act upon the consent to secure it,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“Provided the development is in accordance with the consent issued, there is no mechanism for Council to take action.”<\/p>\n

Corridor a part of a bigger picture<\/p>\n

Stephanie Carrick from the Sydney Basin Koala Network says the Kurrajong Heights wildlife corridor helps link endangered species to the two major national parks.<\/p>\n

She says the Kurrajong area is a hotspot for koalas on the move, with conservationists once tracking one that travelled from Kurrajong to Glenbrook in the Lower Blue Mountains.<\/p>\n

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Stephanie Carrick says the wildlife corridor lies next to an important junction between the Wollemi and Blue Mountains national parks. This map shows koala corridors in green and yellow. (Supplied: Sydney Basin Koala Network)<\/p>\n

“The area here is largely privately owned, so landholders coming together to protect it is an incredible gift to koalas and other wildlife like endangered gang-gang cockatoos who nest in the hollows,” Ms Carrick said.<\/p>\n

“The biggest threat to koalas overall in the Hawkesbury is bushfire, with 78.7 per cent of koala habitat lost in the Black Summer bushfires.<\/p>\n

“In this context, wildlife corridors across private land create lifelines for koalas and other wildlife as private property is prioritised by the NSW Rural Fire Service.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lesley Hulbert remembers when the bird-filled forest behind her home bordering a Sydney national park went quiet. Bushfires…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,236102,236103,236098,236099,236100,10582,90,236101,56,54,55,53013],"class_list":["post-712923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-hawkesbury-wildlife-corridor","tag-kurrajong-heights","tag-kurrajong-heights-wildlife-corridor","tag-kurrajong-wildlife-land","tag-land-for-wildlife","tag-national-parks","tag-science","tag-sydney-land-for-wildlife","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife-corridor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}