Mount Alexander Shire – draft Environment Strategy comments due 14 May

Posted on 5 May, 2015 by Connecting Country

Last week, Connecting Country staff and committee members attended two of the four community workshops/information sessions about the Mount Alexander Shire Council’s 10-year Environment Strategy. The strategy has been released as a draft, and is now open for comment (click here). The three main components of the ‘Environment’ that it covers are the Natural Environment, Sustainability and Waste Management. The last day to provide feedback is Thursday 14 May 2015.

This proposed new strategy follows on from the council’s 2011-2014 Environment Strategy, which is still available for viewing on their website, along with an accompanying State of the Environment Report (click here). By comparing the previous and proposed Environment Strategy documents for the shire, you will quickly see that a very different approach is being taken this time around. As stated in the Introduction chapter, the scope of the 2015-2025 strategy “is limited to the role of Council as a local government organisation.”.

You can make a submission by adding your feedback directly into the draft document, and then posting it to them (see details on council’s website – click here). Or, as Connecting Country is doing, you can provide your feedback to them within a separate letter.

How can the council best support community groups and individuals to undertake landscape restoration?

We encourage local residents and groups to seriously consider this draft strategy. Through its legislative powers, the local council has an important role in managing human impacts on the environment of the Mount Alexander region. With support and encouragement from the community, it can also be a driver of positive change leading to a healthier landscape for both people and biodiversity. Environment Strategies can significantly influence where councils and their staff direct their energies and efforts over many years, and can even establish a locality as a showcase of environmental management.

It can be difficult to know where to start when reviewing and providing feedback on a draft document such as this. In this instance, we have found it useful to think about an important local issue (e.g. the spread of Wheel Cactus; vegetation removal on private land), and then to test this issue against the draft Environment Strategy to see where and how it would be addressed. For other suggestions, the Friends of the Box Ironbark Forest has recently posted some information on their website (click here).

Our submission will commend the council for committing to develop a new Environment Strategy to replace the previous one that finished in 2014. It will also identify that the draft that has been proposed is a good start, but that we’d like to see some more clarity and specific commitments around how the council will protect and restore the shire’s valuable ecosystems.