Author: Save Westleigh Park

Thank you to all of you who attended Wednesday’s Hornsby Shire Council meeting, particularly those of you that spoke and to the many more of you who watched online.

While the outcome to exhibit the Draft Master Plan for Westleigh Park as published was disappointing, it is by no means the end of the story. That was just the first skirmish in what will be a more protracted battle to protect the ecologically sensitive bushland at Westleigh Park and to preserve local residents’ amenity.

Save Westleigh Park will continue to fight for the bushland, the native fauna and for residents and there are many hurdles at which Council’s concepts can fall.

The next step in this battle for biodiversity is the Master Plan and Plan of Management will go on exhibition for one month for public submissions. This is when we all need to make a BIG noise and inundate Council with objecting submissions.

Save Westleigh Park will send you all a submission guide shortly to assist you with the most important points, together with links to the documents and who to send your submission to.

Again, thank you for your support to Save Westleigh Park. We will be here for the duration to support YOU in getting the best and fairest outcomes.

Council are about to put the Westleigh Park Master Plan on public exhibition. See the Council Business Papers.

There are still 7km of tracks through the the sensitive bushland and an unacceptable amount of tracks through the Critically Endangered Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest and the Endangered Duffys Forest.  These tracks apart from 2 are not shared so only available to mountain bikers who are destroying the forest. Council will not release the fauna reports so that the public can see the fauna being disturbed by their illegal activity.

The survival of the Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest depends on all of us. Yet Hornsby Shire Council is not listening to its own advice.

Hornsby Shire Council purchased a block of land from Sydney Water in June 2016 to cater for the needs of the whole community. Very quickly their staff realised that there was a high diversity of species present (244) in the bushland part of the Westleigh site including five vegetation communities, two threatened ecological communities, 4 species of threatened flora, 11 species of native orchids and 50 species of birds observed on the site. Their internal reports detailed the conservation significance of the flora and fauna.

We need to protect our remaining bushland in Sydney before it is lost to future generations. Westleigh Park bushland is incredibly special, it contains critically endangered and endangered ecological communities as well as threatened species of flora and fauna. It has an intrinsic value not only for the local community but also at a State and National level.