Natural Heritage Register

The Willoughby Local Government Area (LGA) has many natural heritage places and items including natural vegetation communities, remnant native trees, fauna habitat and geological features. Protection and management of these places and items, particularly those on land zoned for other uses, is of key significance to the local community and Council.

Council’s Urban Bushland Plan of Management (1997) identified the need for a register of these places and items. Although Council’s bushland reserves had been extensively surveyed, little investigation had been done on natural heritage places and items outside these areas, where the natural heritage is under continual threat from the pressures of urban development and consolidation. A pilot study was initiated in 2000 and in the same year, this project received the National Award for Environmental Planning by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA). The study was later expanded to include all of the Willoughby LGA.

The overall aim of the project has been to identify items of natural heritage outside the major bushland reserves and to promote their greater protection and sustainable management. Road verges, drainage easements, non-reserve public land and private land were surveyed and items of natural heritage listed. The extensive resident consultation and support for the project has been overwhelming.

The Natural Heritage Register, completed in 2016, has enabled Council to develop strategies to monitor, protect and manage this natural heritage. The following schedules are divided into suburbs with associated keys describing the native plant species.