Michelle Slater
EnergyAustralia is backing a Latrobe City Council plan to create a biolink from the Strzelecki Ranges to the alpine ranges which will help create habitats for genetically significant local koala populations.
The proposal is part of a major shake-up of a Latrobe land use scheme with its Live Work Latrobe rural land use strategy.
The strategy aims to create a biodiversity corridor that would stretch from Boolarra towards the northern boundaries of the shire.
It includes identifying significant flora and fauna within the proposed biodiversity corridor including nationally significant Strzelecki koala populations.
Part of the strategy would be working with the Latrobe Valley Mine Rehabilitation Advisory Committee to explore mine rehabilitation areas to form part of the biolink.
EnergyAustralia Yallourn mining manager Ron Mether said the council’s proposed strategy was already tying-in with the company’s rehabilitation and revegetation activities.
He said the company had put in a submission of support for the biolink, as EnergyAustralia was establishing biolinks within its own boundaries, within the planned footprint of the biolink.
He said so far, they had rehabilitated more than 1300 hectares of land and planted 25,000 Strzelecki gums in a drainage corridor Latrobe Road to Torres Lane.
He said they had created a walking track which he hoped could be extended to link up to an old rail trail to the former Morwell briquette factory.
“We sent a letter of support to Latrobe City Council outlining our work. The next step will be to have discussions with Latrobe to make sure our plantings complement their vision,” Mr Mether said.
Mr Mether said field experts had visited the restored wetlands to do native bird surveys and run introduced pest-control programs.
“This summer we had a koala in the mine watching the trucks from the overburden,” he said.
Mr Mether said EnergyAustralia planned to create a lake in the mine void, which would be three-and-a-half times bigger than Blue Rock Dam, and link with Latrobe and Morwell rivers.
Federation University is also on board with Latrobe’s proposed biolink and had recently completed a major genetic study of Victorian koala populations.
Researcher Wendy Wright said the study showed local koalas were of clear conservation significance as they were genetically more diverse than other Victorian koalas.
