History of the 2016 Pinnacle Extension

Environmental offsets are measures to compensate for the adverse impacts of an action on the environment (generally brought about by development) that cannot be adequately reduced through avoidance or mitigation.

Offsets were established by the Australian Government's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, as described by their Environmental Offsets Policy [ 2 MB ], where you can find out more information about them.

The Pinnacle Offset compensates for loss of box gum woodland as a result of the development of land for the new University of Canberra Public Hospital.

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The location of the extension is indicated in red on the map below.

The extension includes the paddock that we have referred to as North Kama South and part of the North Kama Home paddock (see also a more detailed map). As can be seen in the corridor map, it provides a bridge and potential wildlife corridor between the Pinnacle and Kama Nature Reserves. It is, of course, unfortunate that William Hovell Drive disrupts the corridor and that the extension doesn't extend as far north as the underpass.

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The area has been fenced and is now officially incorporated into the Reserve. On 13 May 2016, Planning Minister Mick Gentleman announced the release for community consultation of a draft variation to the Territory Plan proposing zoning changes to incorporate the extension into the Reserve (see media release ). Links to the Draft Variation and associated background documents supporting the proposal can be found below.

The rezoning is now in place and access to the Extension is considered to be the same as for other parts of the Reserve and subject to the same rules of use. It is accessible via the gate in the gully near the north-east corner (as shown by the yellow dot on the walking track map). This gate has been replaced by a step-through gate that allows walkers easy access while still being able to be locked when grazing is required in that part of the extension to manage fuel loads in accordance with the Bushfire Management Plan. A step-though gate has also been installed between the Kama Nature Reserve (KNR) car park on the north-eastern side of William Hovell Drive making it possible to access KNR from Pinnacle by walking through the unlocked gate in the south-west corner of the Extension.

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Friends of the Pinnacle has been carrying out weed control since as early as 2011 in the area that is now the Extension, for several reasons:

• the northern strip of the offset has always been fenced and managed as part of the Pinnacle Nature Reserve, even though it has been officially mapped as not being part of the Reserve;
• fotpin recognised the ecological values of parts of the offset area, particularly the south-east corner and sought to protect and enhance those;
• some parts of the offset area close to the Reserve were (and still are to some extent) heavily infested with a range of weeds and these were treated to minimise their invasion (or re-invasion) of the adjacent parts of the Reserve; and
• as time and resources permitted fotpin's weed control was able to encompass more of the adjacent land not subject to rural lease.

The past weed control effort in the offset area was summarised as part of the development of the Offset Management Plan.

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The Extension and the official Offset area do not coincide precisely. For a start, the south-western fence of the Reserve does not follow the alignment specified in the Territory Plan as its official boundary, presumably for practical reasons. A northern strip of the Offset (about 20 m wide) has therefore always been managed as part of the Reserve. In addition, when aligning the fence to define the north-western boundary of the extension, it was necessary to move it about 20 m further west to avoid running it through areas of course woody debris and rocky pink-tail worm lizard habitat.

For practical reasons, fotpin considers the Extension to be all the area enclosed by current fences that was not previously managed as part of the Reserve.

The difference between the Extension and the official Offset areas is shown in the following pop-up map.

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[Links to all documents referred to here are also summarised in the timeline below]

The Pinnacle Offset compensates for loss of box gum woodland as a result of the development of land for the new University of Canberra Public Hospital. In accordance with the Commonwealth EPBC Act (1999), when the development was proposed the site was assessed for environmental values and it was decided that one of the measures to mitigate the loss of those values resulting from development was to offset it with an area of at least comparable value. The area chosen was the Pinnacle Offset. This assessment is described in the document University of Canberra Public Hospital Preliminary Documentation EPBC Ref. 2013/6987 (April 2014) [ 2 MB ]. At the same time, an Interim Offset Management Plan [ 1 MB ] for the Pinnacle Offset was written.

The proposal for an offset was approved on 14 October 2014 by the Commonwealth Department of Environment (DoE): Approval documentation [ 6 MB ].

In January 2015, fotpin received the first draft of the substantive Offset Management Plan (OMP) for the Pinnacle Offset from ACT Parks and Conservation Service (PCS) to comment on. The OMP went through a number of drafts, with fotpin input, before being forwarded to the DoE for approval in October 2015.

Comments on the Draft OMP were received back from DoE by PCS in the first quarter of 2016 and PCS revised them accordingly, seeking some input from fotpin. The final Revised Draft OMP was received by fotpin for comment in late June 2016 and comments returned on 27 June. This has now been forwarded by PCS back to DoE for final approval.

In the meantime, the section of PCS charged with implementing offset management plans commenced work on the Pinnacle Offset. Baseline surveys were completed and some weed control complementary to that of fotpins' was carried out in the first half of 2016 and fencing of the area was completed in May 2016. Ongoing discussions between PCS and fotpin have focussed on ensuring a continuation of complementary weed control and management in the Offset.

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