Land, Flora and Fauna
The environmental impacts of the Sugarloaf Pipeline were guided by the requirements of the appropriate ministers, government departments and legislation. The Hon. Peter Garrett, Federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts approved the construction of the Sugarloaf Pipeline in September 2008. Approval was conditional. The Alliance was required to meet several stringent environmental conditions.
In addition, each of the project’s 17 environmental management plans needed to be approved by the Victorian Government and, in some cases, by the Commonwealth. The Alliance was also bound by legislation, in particular the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Commonwealth) and the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 (Victoria) regarding threatened flora and fauna.
Flora
Initial flora surveys conducted along (and near) the Sugarloaf Pipeline corridor revealed the region to be rich in native species, including several threatened species. Unfortunately, a number of individual threatened plant species located within Toolangi State Forest perished during the ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires of 7 February 2009. (Alliance botanists periodically monitored these known sites throughout construction to ensure there was no adverse impact to these species should they regenerate.)
The only threatened flora remaining after the bushfires were the matted flax-lily (Dianella amoena), round-leaf pomaderris (Pomaderris vacciniifolia), Yarra gum (Eucalyptus yarraensis) and green scent-bark (Eucalyptus fulgens).
Where there were known locations for these species, disturbance was minimised as much as possible. High visibility ‘no go’ fencing was also installed around these locations.
The Alliance took a proactive approach to minimising damage to flora along (and near) the construction corridor. Designated access points off the Melba Highway were set up for all vehicles, machinery and personnel, to reduce damage to threatened flora populations within road reserves. All vehicles, plant and associated activities (such as storage of spoil material, pipe lay-down) were prohibited in areas of known or possible habitat outside the construction area. Alliance botanists checked the corridor on a weekly basis during construction to ensure sensitive areas were not suffering any detrimental effects.
Fauna
With a range of habitat in the form of waterways, native grasslands and 12km of forest on the Sugarloaf Pipeline corridor, the Alliance had a significant number of fauna species to consider.
The Alliance mapped the corridor and designating each area as ‘possible’ or ‘unlikely’ habitat for grassland, woodland or aquatic species, as well as marking the location of every hollow-bearing tree and log, wombat burrow, crayfish burrow or bandicoot area.
To ensure there were no threatened frogs in the waterways (such as the brown toadlet or growling grass frog), or threatened fauna in the trees and logs (such as the spot-tailed quoll or brush-tailed phascogale), every body of water, hollow tree and log was then observed for at least one evening. Given that there were nearly 100 bodies of water and a forest of hollows to watch, this meant a lot of long nights spent staring into the darkness for the team of Alliance zoologists.
Golden sun moth
Flying for only a few days per year, the golden sun moth (Synemon plana) spends the rest of its life cycle as a small grub in the soil. After the flying season the only option open to the Alliance zoologists was to spend several weeks sifting through dozens of cubic metres of dirt searching for the small grubs. These surveys revealed significant colonies of golden sun moths in the northern part of the corridor near Sheoak, just south of Yea. After consulting with the Department of Sustainability and Environment, it was decided the Alliance would conduct habitat slab replacement trials.
Striped legless lizard
As with the golden sun moth, there was the potential for Alliance wildlife specialists to find striped legless lizards (Delmar impar) in the northern part of the corridor. After spending hours searching, wildlife specialists struck gold a few kilometres south of Sheoak. Lizards started appearing by the dozen and were quickly scooped up and chauffeured to Melbourne Zoo, where they spent their winter safe from pipelaying activities. Nearly six months later, with the pipe in the ground, topsoil reinstated and the lizards’ active season underway, the lizards were retrieved from the zoo and returned to the wild.
