Meeting papers

14.13. Community education
Noosa’s EBFRs, beaches and adjacent waters have thousands of visitors each day, hundreds of
boundary sharing neighbours and thousands of nearby neighbours across the localities. How these
visitors and neighbours treat the foreshore reserves they live near or visit directly affects how the
reserves look and function. Ongoing community education and targeted communication between
Council, visitors and neighbours will contribute to the protection and enhancement of EBFRs. This
also includes embedding clear objectives for best practice reserve management into Council’s day
to day practices and approaches.

Objectives

6.       Increase understanding of the social and environmental values of foreshores

Outcomes
   • More opportunities are provided for residents and visitors to improve their understanding of
      the social and environmental values of the EBFR

     •   Neighbour and visitor related impacts in the EBFRs are reduced

     •   Visitor information about visiting the Eastern Beaches is improved.


Neighbour communication
Neighbours include boundary sharing neighbours and neighbours within walking distance – where
the reserve is part of their work or home neighbourhood. Like all urban bushland reserves, how
neighbours interact with Noosa’s foreshore reserves is crucial to achieving positive long term social
and environmental outcomes.

Council’s initial consultation indicated that some areas may only contain roughly 2030-40 % long-
term rental or owner residents, with the remainder being short term lets or holiday homes.
Unaddressed delivery or local notices and advertisements are unlikely to reach non-residential
neighbours. In many cases the people who most interact with the public land neighbouring these
properties work for private rental managers, including landscaping and maintenance companies.

Targeted communication that includes hard to reach neighbours is important. Planned
communication topics include being a ‘good bushland neighbour’, ‘what to plant in your garden’,
and the ‘values of dunes and foreshores’.


Visitor communication
Noosa’s Eastern Beaches have a very high numbers of visitors, and how these visitors treat the
reserve also influences how it functions and looks. Communicating with local visitors, (many who
may visit several times a week), visitors from the broader Sunshine Coast, and from further afield,
particularly short term visitors, require different delivery avenues and perhaps different materials.
Delivery should be a mix of on-reserve, online and external engagement and content.

Providing visitors with better information about visiting the Eastern Beaches will particularly help
people with mobility and access considerations.


Reserve and general community information


Eastern Beaches Foreshore Reserves Management Plan 2023                                        Page 63


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