A Joined-up Regional Landscape: A Roadmap to connect , Dr Darryl Low Choy Part 1

Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand's National Symposium about finding engineering solutions to the ecological problems of linear infrastructures such as road and rail.

Can local scale wildlife barrier mitigation measures exist in isolation or do they need a broader spatial context for support and long term viability? The landscapes of our metropolitan regions are complex entities which are extricably linked to their nearby urban communities. These landscapes are often fragmented through urbanisation and peri-urbanisation resulting in the artificial delineation of property and institutional entities. When regions experience rapid growth, landscape fragmentation can be particularly acute. Hence, there are strong imperatives to address the negatives of fragmented landscapes through some form of coordinated set of linked initiatives.

A spatial management framework is needed into which these otherwise isolated local scale wildlife barrier mitigation measures can fit. This is required in order to provide purpose and meaning to the isolated initiatives. However, this framework will have to address a range of community landscape values that embrace the more traditional values such as biodiversity, outdoor recreation, rural production and the like, through to the emerging values of ecosystem services and the indigenous landscape.

This talk briefly examines the regional planning initiatives associated with South East Queensland and the notion of a regional landscape framework and the role that landscape corridors can play as part of that framework. The paper will conclude with an overview of an intended roadmap designed to bring these conceptual landscape corridors into reality in the SEQ context.

Category:

Science & Technology