2021-01-18 General Committee Meeting Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                18 JANUARY 2021


This question received 71 responses which indicated 38 were willing to pay more, with about $20
per year the most commonly nominated figure, and 31 were not prepared to pay more.

Other issues that received the most responses included;
   Recreational boating, with the use of jet-skis being a polarising issue
   Boat speeds in the Noosa River
   Commercial and recreational fishing
   Waste entering the river from boats
   River mouth management and dredging (even though it was not covered by the draft plan).

Between River Plan V1 and V2
The feedback from the first public consultation was collated and Councillors were briefed in
October and November 2018. Using this feedback, the plan was changed in multiple ways;
   Restructured the plan to more clearly articulate the social, economic and environmental
     values, and the threats to those values.
   Broadened the objectives, and structured the plan and its actions around three themes;
     o     River Health & Biodiversity
     o     Sustainable Use & Enjoyment
     o     Working together
   Removed some actions related to human use that did not have strong ecological or marine
     safety impacts (e.g. management takeover of commercial jetty leases, regulating commercial
     fleets)).
   Aligned with the (now endorsed) Noosa Environment Strategy, both structurally and within
     the Monitoring & Evaluation section.
   New actions around:
     o     A local buy-out of the T5 beam trawl fishery
     o     River mouth management and development of a Shoreline Erosion Management Plan
           (SEMP)
     o     A Zero Litter to the Noosa River target
     o     Marine turtle habitat protection
     o     Groundwater research
     o     Benthic biodiversity research.

Following on from the workshops, Councillors asked for further information with regard to
commercial fishing in the river, to help inform decision-making. At the December 2018 Ordinary
Meeting Council resolved to prepare a Noosa Fishing Futures research-based directions paper to
inform Council’s position and actions related to the long-term sustainability of fisheries
management in the Noosa River as a key input into the Noosa River Plan.

The outcome of the procurement was reported back to Council in March 2019 and the report itself
was presented to Council, along with a submission to the State’s fisheries reform process, in July
2019. The report brought together fishing data for the Noosa River and involved significant one-
on-one meetings, including fisheries wholesalers, local restaurants, local fishing shops and current
Noosa River commercial fishing operators.

At around the same time as the Fishing Futures paper was being developed, the first interim results
were received on a research project looking at benthic invertebrates in the Noosa River, which
showed significant declines in abundance and diversity in these key elements of the food chain
over the past 20 years. While this report (the final version of which was publicly released in 2020)


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