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Urban Biodiversity Strategy
The Urban Biodiversity Strategy sets a clear path forward for how we manage and take care of nature in Boroondara over the next 10 years.
Our 4 objectives are to:
- protect and enhance biodiversity on public land
- improve biodiversity on private land through community engagement
- reduce land use and development impacts on biodiversity
- ensure decision-making is based on sound knowledge and up-to-date evidence.
Our targets are to:
- increase the area of land managed for biodiversity by one hectare every year
- help residents and schools to plant 5,000 new native plants every year.
The Biodiversity Sites Plan
The Biodiversity Sites Plan is part of the Urban Biodiversity Strategy.
It helps us maintain, manage, budget, and allocate resources for biodiversity sites within Boroondara.
The plan:
- lists the 53 biodiversity sites we currently manage, which covers over 60 hectares
- helps us improve the condition of existing vegetation and areas dedicated to biodiversity management.
- identifies up to 25 hectares of land that we can manage for biodiversity.
Community consultation
We invited our community to share feedback to help us finalise the strategy.
We received your feedback between March and April 2024. Thank you to everyone who had their say.
You can find out what our community told us on our Urban Biodiversity Strategy page on Your Say.
Reflecting our community's values
Our community have expressed how important biodiversity is to them:
- During the consultation with 5,000 people to develop the Boroondara Community Plan 2021–31, 69% of participants selected ‘Parks and Green Spaces’ as a top 3 priority for us to focus on over the next 10 years.
- Biodiversity was rated by our community as one of the 3 most important priorities in the Climate Action Plan.
- During our Climate Action Plan consultation, 79% of local participants said protecting and enhancing biodiversity was very important to them (5 out of 5 stars).
Project status
We’re committed to protecting our natural environment by delivering an Action Plan, with specific steps to implement the Urban Biodiversity Strategy.
We will review and update the Action Plan at every 2 years to make sure we keep delivering on the strategy's vision over the next 10 years.
The first Action Plan has information about each of the initiatives and actions for the next 2 financial years (2024/25 and 2025/26).
What we’ve achieved so far
The previous Urban Biodiversity Strategy recently completed its timeline. We are pleased to have made progress in the following areas.
Increasing biodiversity land
- In 2013, Council managed 36 hectares of public land for biodiversity. Our goal was to increase this to 45 hectares by 2023. Council surpassed this goal by maintaining 60 hectares of land for biodiversity at the end of 2023/24 financial year.
Improving our billabongs
- Between 2018 and 2019, we collaborated with Melbourne Water to pump water from the Yarra River into the Burke Road and Willsmere Billabongs to improve their condition.
Implementing the Krefft’s gliders program
- We’ve created a habitat enhancement program to support the growth of Krefft’s gliders in Boroondara.
- We invite you to come along to our monthly tree-hollow checks for our Krefft's gliders. You can check availability by visiting our Sustainable living workshops and events page.
New planning controls
- New planning controls have been introduced, including a Significant Landscape Overlay and a Design and Development Overlay.
- These overlays specify mandatory setbacks from the riverbank, mandatory building heights, vegetation removal, and weed and erosion control for new developments along the river.
Community initiatives
- We provide indigenous plant vouchers to Boroondara schools and kindergartens, many of which are located near biodiversity sites and corridors.
- We’ve delivered a range of education and citizen science initiatives for the community, including our Backyard Biodiversity Project and the City Nature Challenge.
The importance of biodiversity in Boroondara
Boroondara is largely an urban area, but it houses a wide variety of bushland reserves, wetlands and waterways. There are still some local places where native indigenous species have survived.
These places are valuable because they have many different plants and animals. They also play an important role in helping us and our environment, such as:
- regulating temperature
- cleaning air and water
- reducing the risk of flooding
- absorbing carbon dioxide
- helping to combat climate change.
To explore the value and diversity of Boroondara’s natural environment, visit our Wildlife, biodiversity and gardening page.
Biodiversity and the North East Link Project
We currently manage over 60 hectares of land for biodiversity across the municipality, including the Koonung Creek Reserve.
The North East Link Program will acquire up to 7 hectares (equivalent to 25% of the Koonung Creek Reserve) to accommodate the widening of the Eastern Freeway for the Victorian Government’s North East Link.
We are advocating to the North East Link Program (NELP) to guarantee the best possible outcomes for biodiversity restoration.
In response, we have developed a Tree Canopy Replacement Plan, which will guide the replacement of trees that will be removed from Boroondara as a result of NELP. We have also developed the Koonung Creek Reserve master plan that will guide the replacement of native vegetation and amenity plantings removed from the reserve by the NELP.