2015-01-12 General Committee Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                  12 January 2015


•     Landholders contacting Council with an offer to sell;
•     Council contacting owners of high priority parcels of land with offers to purchase;
•     Purchasing land that’s already for sale on the open market;
•     Seeking expressions of interest from owners interested in selling their land.
Determining which properties might be purchased shall be achieved by compiling a Preferred
Acquisition List. Council will establish an Environment Levy Working Group to develop and
review the list in consideration of the following priorities:
Biodiversity Attributes
The land will preserve or enhance biodiversity in the Noosa Shire and the land has biodiversity
attributes that warrant high-level protection.
Regional Ecosystem (RE) Attributes
The land will make a significant contribution to the resilience of regional and locally significant
ecosystems, particularly where those ecosystems are considered to be at risk.
Connectivity
The land will add to an identified or potential wildlife corridor consistent with a longer-term
strategic land conservation strategy. The land may thus fall within Council’s identified Strategic
Biodiversity Corridors.
Consolidation
The land will consolidate and build on existing areas managed for nature conservation consistent
with a longer term strategic land conservation strategy.
Species Protection
The land contains plant and/or animal species that are identified as being Endangered,
Vulnerable or Near Threatened under the Queensland Nature Conservation Act, 1992 and the
Nature Conservation (Wildlife) Regulations 2006, or identified as locally significant species.
Threat Level
The land is identified as meeting some or all of the above criteria and is not adequately protected
under statutory mechanisms and is under threat of inappropriate development or other
inappropriate land use.
Value for Money
The land represents good value for money.
Environmental offsetting and rehabilitation potential
The land may be vegetated or already cleared or partly cleared, and located within a strategic
biodiversity corridor, and is suitable for purchase for environment offset opportunities.
Priority properties will undergo detailed assessments before being recommended for purchase.
2.    Support for Voluntary Conservation Agreements
The Voluntary Conservation Agreement (VCA) program is a high level protective mechanism that
supports private landholders wishing to conserve their property’s environmental values in
perpetuity by registering a covenant on title over some or all of the property.
A conservation covenant is the legal mechanism used to permanently protect the portion of the
property covered by the VCA. It is registered under the Queensland Land Title Act 1994.
Conservation covenants place conditions on the title that run with the land and are binding on
future owners.



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