Cultural Heritage

The site now known as Wallum, on Minjungbal tribal lands, is rich in cultural heritage. It is an area that holds great importance to all the tribes of the Bundjalung Nation and is a place of common use and shared responsibility. Within the development site there is an ancient pathway that was used to traverse to major ceremonial sites, both within the site and nearby. There are sacred men and women's sites and it is home to many endangered totemic species, abundant food sources and medicinal plants.

It is also of great spiritual importance that connects many creation stories, including stories of the Creator Nuthungully, the Three Brothers, the story of First Light and the story of the Goanna and Snake, all of which exist and belong to this area.

Pre-colonisation, this area held great importance due to it lagoons and access to freshwater springs and creeks that have been noted as integral to the traditional usage of the area to sustain the many clans and tribes who frequented the region for ceremonial purposes.

There is grave concern for the Wallum Sedge Froglet, the Glossy Black Cockatoo, the Long-nosed Potoroo, the Rainbow Bee Eater and the Mitchell’s Rainforest Snail.  The development will have a direct impact on threatened species, including 9 federally-listed Matters of National Environmental Significance and 15 species listed under the Biodiversity Conservation Act (2016). Traditional owners have a cultural responsibility to ensure the protection of these species along with the rare and diverse ecosystem that inhabit their totems and to protect the ceremonial sites.

In December 2023 independent Elders, cultural leaders and cultural educators undertook a preliminary site-walk and advised Byron Shire Council (BSC) that the Cultural Heritage Assessment (CHA) undertaken at Wallum by Everick Heritage PTY LTD is missing important and vital cultural content – no support was given and no action was taken by BSC.

Not to be deterred, in early 2024 the “Wallum Alliance” was formed and a delegation of Minjungbal, Widjubal Wia-Bul and Arawakal TO’s, alongside a team of ecologists and community members, travelled to Sydney and met with Ministers to raise they concerns.

The Delegation was a great success and garnered the support of the Ministers for both the Community Land Acquisition Initiative concept and a federal S10 application with Minister Plebersek’s office, the Department of Climate Change, Environment and Water.

The application has now been received and a process of thorough community and cultural consultation pertaining to the Wallum site is underway.

CLAI will continue to lobby the government regarding the importance of protecting places of high cultural value and ecological significance. We want to ensure Wallum will continue as a place of living culture and learning for all our future generations.

The following excerpts are from a letter to Federal Environment Minister from First Nations man, Jahvis Loveday highlight the love and care for country from our younger generations:

To the Honourable Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek,

I am Jahvis Loveday, a young aboriginal filmmaker, storyteller, and dancer from Bundjalung country in the far north of NSW.

Our brother's late father's people are that of the people of Brunswick Heads River NSW and the people of the Tweed Heads River, and the honor of protecting our country, our waters, and our community, has now fallen upon us, the next generation.

The Cape Byron lighthouse sits upon one of the most sacred initiation sites in our country, the final one, where boys will become men.

Our Bora grounds were destroyed, rumored to be some of the oldest in Australia, and now lie beneath a cricket ground and bowls club in Brunswick Heads.

Our Grandmother's Hill - which Mullumbimby is named after, fades away under a farmhouse, taken.

Our bora grounds that connect the songline from the east coast of Australia to the west coast, starting at Nuthungulli/Julian Rocks, were damaged.

We used to camp on either side of the south arm of Brunswick Heads river, now under threat from the Wallum housing development. All up and down that creek there were/are middens, thousands of years old, where them old people would sit, and where we would sit as kids, and learn to fish, learn to become who we are meant to be. We learned that the land the Wallum housing development is supposed to go on is very sacred, almost never talked about.

We have little left here in the Byron Shire of our cultural sites. It's heartbreaking for me as a young man, trying to do my part in continuing Australia's culture, trying to step up and become a man, whilst witnessing the destruction of all that we hold sacred to us.

All I want is to be able to show my kids those trees, that are over 300 years old, I want to show them as we walk from the river, only across a 100m radius, we have over five different types of country, that hold so much life, so many threatened species, that we will lose if all these houses go in

Biodiversity
The original Environmental Assessment from 2011 by JWA, that was required by the Director General under the then known DGEARs - Director General’s Environmental Assessment Requirements - was a process that meant the DG of Planning spelt out the requirements for the Environmental Assessment.

This EA (JWA, 2011), found seven NSW threatened species, being:

• The Common Planigale - Planigale maculata
• The Eastern Osprey - Pandion cristalus
• Glossy Black-cockatoos - Calyptorhynchus lantami
• Grey-headed flying fox - Pteroptus policephalus,
• The Koala - Phascolarctos cinereus
• The Little Bentwing-bat - Minipterus australis, and
• The (known) Wallum Froglet - Crinia tinnula

When compiling all the species in all the reports, going back over 20 years that relate to this site, there are over 100 threatened species listed as either present, likely or predicted on the site - including utilising the NSW BAM (Biodiversity Assessment Method) system of analysis in 2022.

BAM is a software program that considers vegetation on the site and associated species - this was used in the 2022 BDAR - Biodiversity Assessment Report that was undertaken for the site, and published, yet then ignored as the Cert 34A was issued a few months later, rendering the BDAR irrelevant!

There are NO Species Impact Statements (SIS) for any impacted TS on the site. The Federally Threatened Wallum Sedge Frog (recently recorded on the site by our ecologists at far greater range and strength of population than surveyed by AWC), is likely to be significantly impacted by this proposed development. Mitchell’s Rainforest Snail (MRS) which Council has mapped with potential habitat on 3 of the 4 sides of the site, is also likely to be significantly impacted by this proposed development, as alterations of hydrology will impact the quality of habitat. It is alarming that as MNES, these species have not been covered in the management plans at all.

The VMP only incorporates compensatory measures for 3 of the 9 EPBC listed threatened species.

Other significant species likely to be on site, include the Long Nosed Potoroo, which is at risk of local extinction and has not been surveyed in the Tyagarah Nature Reserve in recent monitoring. However, following the recent fires, they will likely move north and attempt to find refuge at this Wallum site, and potentially are already there as indicated by runway tunnels in the heath recorded by Ecologist Andrew Benwell, 2023 - this species has not been considered and there is no MP in place or proposed in regards to Potorous tridactylus, known to be found in the Coastal Dune Dry Sclerophyll Forests - Far North Sands Scribbly Gum Heathy Forests of our Wallum.

The slashed heathland is providing key habitat for many species, including the ground-nesting magnificent Rainbow Bee Eaters, the Wallum Froglet and Wallum Sedge Frog, and has enormous capacity for regeneration, as stated by various ecologists.

Koala

Since 2013 when the development was conditionally approved, Koalas have gone from being nationally listed as  Vulnerable (2012), to now Endangered on the 12th February 2022,  with an extinction prediction by 2050 unless urgent action is taken. Not one more koala tree should be harmed. We therefore also do not believe this development is in line with the 2022 National Koala recovery plan.

At the NSW level the status of the Koala has also been escalated to Endangered on the 20th May 2022. Both these changes happened before the NSW Department of Planning signed the Cert 34A for Wallum - it is not possible the past process was adequate to assess impacts of the proposed development on koalas as their status has declined significantly since 2013. The destruction of Koala feed trees and habitat of this iconic species can not have been adequately addressed in relation to their continued decline in the local population since the initial EA in 2011.

The Byron Shire Council Koala Plan of Management shows Koala habitat and feed trees on the proposed site; “Koala activity has been consistently recorded at the site in surveys from 1996 - 2009”.

Koala presence is clearly known and acknowledged in developer reports as present on site in 2003, 2004, 2009 & 2011, yet this was denied by AWC at the Byron Shire Council NoM meeting on Wallum (12/10/23), which falsely stated to the Councillors there were no Koalas known on the site!!

76 Old Growth Scribbly gums will be destroyed if this development goes ahead.

Interestingly, hollows in Eucalyptus racemosa (slender leaf scribbly gum) do not begin to form until the trees are 200+ years old, and hollows such as this take a minimum of 300 years to form (*Wormington 1996). This has again been mis-reported in publications from the proponent attempting to play down the high conservation value of these Old Growth, pre-colonial trees, stating in some reports they are only 50-60 years old.

The science does not support these false claims. Tallowood (E. microcorys) begins developing hollows at approximately 170-200 years and Scribbly Gum (E. racemosa) at 200-235 years. Large hollows in these species form after approximately 250 and 300 years respectively. To put this into perspective, if you plant a Tallowood today (and assuming it survives) it will not provide a nesting hollow until about 2267!” - Land For Wildlife - www.lfwseq.org.au/how-to-age-trees/

Glossy Black Cockatoos

Multiple examples can be found of misinformation or incorrect reporting and mapping within the official reports and environmental assessments for this site. The 2016 DA (JWA, 2011 - in Appendix C, page 188 of the 2016 DA) shows apparent Glossy Black Cockatoo habitat strangely surrounding the proposed site, but not on it, despite no fences and these wide ranging birds clearly being unobstructed to use the feed sources and water on the Wallum site. We have proof this is incorrect with many official siting records from the last few months now recorded within the proposed site boundary and including utilising the central creek.

* Ref: Wormington, K.R. (1996). Tree hollow formation and forestry management. B. App. Sc. Honors thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane.

We know less than a dozen Glossy Black Cockatoos remain in the Byron Shire. A group of 3 or more are on site daily, feeding, drinking and roosting and they are regularly seen in the centre north-south creek, drinking in the evenings - right where the first bulldozing is scheduled to occur! Glossy Black Cockatoos feed on trees that will be cut down if this development proceeds.

Aquatic Biodiversity

Despite the proponent advocating the central creek, renamed a drain, was actually to be considered a ‘river’ at one stage - suiting their purposes of allowing the storm water run off to impact this pristine ecosystem - that as far as we know is free from the invasive and destructive Mosquito Fish, Gambusia, despite this being incorrectly presented in the current reports before Council (being considered on the 8th Feb 2024).

Citizen scientist-ecologists have repeatedly surveyed the central creek, and found ZERO Gambusia fish and permanent water in this creek. The current proposed management plans would see this area destroyed, despite repeated requirements for this creek to be protected and a 40m buffer implemented (20m either side, not including the creek itself), impacting the unique acid ecology of the area and devastating local threatened species populations of Wallum Froglets and Wallum Sedge Frogs.

There was also no aquatic fauna survey done on the site, despite pristine creeks with rare fish species; we are concerned that many of the ecological surveys were inadequate in their design, and the species surveyed, as well as being outdated.

Wallum Froglet

The engineered habitats proposed by the Wallum Froglet Management Plans (WFMP) don’t work, are not an established or proven approach and have locally failed in past attempts and will cause irreparable damage, in fact destruction, of this species and its rare acidic habitat; there’s no recreating the Wallum, and 300 year old hollow-bearing habitat cannot be offset with seedlings, the idea that they can be is based on something other than ecology.

In addition we now know that the Director General (DG) was well aware in the DG’s Environmental Assessment (EA) report response, as referenced in page 214, of the 2016 DA that was not completed:

The fact that the known habitat of the Wallum Froglet includes the entire proposed subdivision site is clearly evidenced here, yet conveniently never mentioned in any reports since. The loss of habitat is stated as 12.29ha.

There is no way that these habitats can be artificially engineered to be ecologically successful, nor successfully mitigate the negative impacts from fill and earthworks and the devastating, lasting impacts of urban development and subdivision, in a highly sensitive, acid sulfate soil, ecologically intact landscape, and one that the community highly value and utilise.

Despite being ecologically flawed, there is a Management Plan for the Wallum Froglet (NSW Vulnerable); however that is the only species afforded one!