A statement by Friends of Gippsland Lakes Inc.
Resi Ventures’ second statement of 7 September says sections of the fence were opened on 28 August on its ecologist’s advice, that DEECA attended on 31 August, and that it is working with DEECA, Council and the Commonwealth on a permanent fencing design. We welcome all three, and DEECA’s involvement in particular.
The statement also says the company’s actions have been “consistent with the conditions of its federal and state approvals”. That is a new claim, and it can be tested against the developer’s own documents.
The state permit. The developer’s published construction plan describes the fencing as “Stage 1” of the works program. The planning permit requires, before any works associated with the subdivision start, a Construction Management Plan approved by Council that includes “management of mammals”. The developer has not said whether such a plan exists. If it does, it should say so. If it does not, the claim of consistency with the state permit depends on the fencing not being works, which is not what the developer’s own construction plan calls it. We have asked twice which fence this is. The statement does not say.
“No further injuries or fatalities have been recorded.” We hope that is right. It is not what residents report, with Kangaroos still showing signs of stress when trying to jump over the fence or navigate frantically around it to the wetlands next door. FOGL holds dated video from early September of a large male striking the fence and crashing to the ground on its side after the openings were made, risking a broken leg. The developer’s own Mammal Management Plan requires daily checks of all exclusion fences, and its construction plan requires daily inspections recorded weekly. The simplest way to settle the question is to publish those records.
The remedy was already written down. The 2023 Mammal Management Plan, prepared by the developer’s own ecologist at Council’s request, says what to do when a kangaroo is inside a fenced area: identify where it entered and widen the entry point. It says fencing on the northern boundary is a dispersal barrier to be removed before construction, that exclusion fencing belongs on the eastern and southern boundaries against the road, and that fencing should go up only after all grassland is removed and no animals remain inside. That plan was written before the Commonwealth on-site offset plan was approved in 2025, mandating the planting and protection of grassland for the snipe. These two plans are yet to be reconciled. The advice acted on from 28 August is consistent with the fence-opening advice that plan gave in March 2023. Eight Eastern Grey Kangaroos died and an unknown number stressed and injured in between.
The bigger issue is sequence. Condition 5 of the permit requires an independent, suitably qualified ecologist’s survey of Latham’s Snipe habitat before any ground disturbance. Condition 2(j) requires any changes arising from that survey to be carried into the plans that fix the development footprint, the offset area, the No-Go Zones and the offset fencing. The Commonwealth approval sets a fixed maximum of 1.216 hectares of Latham’s Snipe habitat that may be cleared. However, the extent of habitat on the site remains disputed: the proponent has identified approximately 1.216 hectares, while Dr Birgita Hansen’s independent assessment identified approximately 6.3 hectares of suitable habitat. That discrepancy has not yet been resolved.
The location of any offset fence depends on plans that require an independent snipe habitat survey. Fencing the boundary now presupposes an answer the permit has not yet given.
“A permanent fencing design.” The fence at issue is temporary. Permanent fencing under the Commonwealth approval is a pre-settlement requirement. Whatever design is agreed with DEECA and the Commonwealth, the permit’s process for it is Council’s endorsement of the condition 2 plans, in public, and the developer’s own documents already pull in two directions on the same boundary: the Offset Management Plan’s permanent fence exists to keep dogs and people out of the offset area; the Mammal Management Plan’s northern boundary exists to let kangaroos out of the site. Reconciling them is what a construction management plan is for, and that is the document the permit requires before works start.
What the statement leaves out. Which fence this is. Who certified it, on what date, against which plan. The carcasses, still on site on 11 September and being scavenged, adjacent to habitat the developer’s own Offset Management Plan says is threatened by foxes.
The post spikes and fallen panels are still there and continue to pose a risk to wildlife, especially at night when they are effectively invisible – creating a serious risk of collision, entanglement and injury to animals moving through the site.
The Offset and Environmental Management Plans, which the Commonwealth approval required published in January and which are not on the developer’s website. Cattle entering the offset area trample vegetation, compact and disturb the soil, and degrade the damp grassland habitat on which Latham’s Snipe depend on for foraging and roosting. Latham’s Snipe are threatened, migratory species protected under state and commonwealth laws the species the fence was said to protect: FOGL recorded four inside the development footprint on 7 September, the day the statement was published.
None of this will necessarily stop the development. It simply requires the conditions to be honoured in the order the permit sets: first and foremost, the independent snipe habitat survey, the plans that follow from it, and a construction management plan that actually manages the risks to wildlife, before any works, including fencing, begins. We would far prefer the conditions simply be met, and every step the developer takes toward that makes any other course unnecessary