2019-05-07 Planning & Environment Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                       7 MAY 2019


4    Transition Committee

The Transition Committee has been established and met on three occasions. The purpose of the
Transition Committee is to provide a co-ordinated approach to the transition of the lands to
protected area tenure. The Transition Committee deals with practical implementation of the
agreement and maintains ongoing communication and working relationships between the parties.
It has representatives from each of the parties and Council provides the secretarial support to the
Committee. At the first Committee meeting, Council’s CEO was appointed as Chairperson.

Some of the issues that the Transition Committee has been dealing with include:
 Coordinating site inspections to identify the optimum timing for finalisation of harvesting and
   in particular, helping to co-ordinate between HQP and Department of Forestry with their
   remaining harvests.
 Managing the early partial surrender of part of the Ringtail PLA area to allow for early access
   for remediation by third parties.
 Managing the coordination between different government departments for the transition of
   tenure from State forest to National Park (further details below).
 Developing a shared community engagement and communication plan to assist with
   upcoming harvesting in the Yurol/Pomona locality.

The Transition Committee is working exceptionally well with a high level of co-operation and
mutual support for the ultimate goals of the project.

5    First tranche of tenure transfer to National Park

Under the contracts, a first tranche of land was identified to be transferred to National Park from
State forest. This was State forest land that was not encumbered by PLA or affected by
hardwood plantations. In the map attached to this report in Attachment 1, this is identified as the
357 hectares marked in “hatched pink”.

The process for achieving this is relatively complex but has been underway for some time.
Separate land parcels have been established. More importantly, the requisite notice under the
Nature Conservation Act has been tabled in State Parliament on 3 April 2019 by the Minister for
the Environment (see details in Attachment 2).

It is anticipated that by the time this report is considered by Council, that process should be
finalised and that land will have National Park status.

6    Harvesting of existing pine by HQPlantations

Under the contracts, HQPlantations have 5 years to finalise their harvesting of their pine
plantations that have commercial value. It is highly likely that HQPlantations will complete their
harvesting well before that time.

Over the last 9 months, HQPlantations have finalised their harvesting of large sections of the
Ringtail pine forest, particularly those areas near McKinnon Road. There was one small non-
commercial section of pine which has been mulched to promote early regeneration of that
section. This was undertaken by HQPlantations’ contractors while working in the locality but paid
for by Council (approximately $15,000) through arrangements managed via the Transition
Committee. This early intervention will save Council significant regeneration costs further down
the track for that part of the site.




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