Category: Planning

SAVE NORTH COAST NATURE CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED

*MEDIA RELEASE*
Sunday 4 November 2012
*SAVE NORTH COAST NATURE CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED*

An alliance of environmental professionals and conservation groups are today (Monday) launching a campaign to prevent the NSW Government’s plans to remove essential environmental protection from nearly 60% of the Far North Coast’s forests, wetlands and wildlife habitats.

Called Save North Coast Nature, the campaign aims to unite environment groups, Local Government, tourism and the community to demand our region keep the same environmental protections available to the rest of the state.  It follows the State’s decision to strip powers from local government and local communities by removing environmental zones and overlays from Local Environment Plans, in a move that threatens to leave 45,000 hectares of the region’s environmental assets vulnerable to inappropriate development. read more

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Conservation Ecologists request deferral of LEP’s

*CONSERVATION ECOLOGISTS ASSOCIATION**
**Science — Conservation — Community**

**MEDIA RELEASE 28 October 2012*

The Conservation Ecologists Association (CEA) is requesting that finalisation of far north coast Local Environment Plans be deferred until the State Government completes its review of environmental zones.

The request to the Mayors of Tweed, Byron, Ballina, Lismore, and Kyogle Councils is in response to the NSW Minister for Planning’s decision of 20 September (requested by Don Page and Thomas George) to over-ride the Council’s Local Environment Plan (LEP) processes by excising environmental zones and overlays in “rural” areas.

CEA spokesperson, Dr Robert Kooyman, said that the State Government’s decision to excise environmental zones and overlays from far north coast Local Environment Plans has effectively removed the environment from local planning. read more

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Hazzard abolishes E Zones

Minister Hazzard abolishes E Zones and sentences Koalas to E-xtinction

The Caldera Environment Centre is appalled by the recent announcement by the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure and local representatives Don Page and Thomas George to remove environmental protection zones (E2 and E3) from draft LEPs on the north coast. Claims by the farming lobby about restrictive constraints imposed by the new E zones are deliberately misleading and are a hyped-up scare campaign designed to provide an excuse for state intervention. The state government made the “promise” upon election to return control of planning decisions back to councils;  this move to abolish E zones is state government interference and overruling of local planning decisions. read more

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