RESULTS of the state election may decide the fate of two parcels of Mount Eliza land that are both the subjects of environmental concerns.
South Eastern Centre for Sustainability president Steve Karakitsos, who has led the fight to protect a 2.8-hectare site at 57 Kunyung Road, said it was an important area of habitat and habitat corridors, and the only site in Mount Eliza where frogs regenerate, according to the Melbourne Water frog census.
Karakitsos said development of the former South East Water reservoir would lead to a local extinction of frogs but threaten other significant species identified in the ecological survey of the site by ecologist Malcolm Legg, author of the Mornington Peninsula Shire commissioned, Mornington Peninsula Wildlife Atlas.
Nearby land at 60-70 Kunyung Road is currently the subject of a large retirement development application and a planning scheme amendment, which will both ultimately be decided by the state government after the election.
Liberal candidate Chris Crewther asked Planning Minister Lizzie Blandthorn to protect the green wedge zones and suggested the state government buy the site, but his request was not considered because the government is in caretaker mode.
A spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning’s planning director, Stuart Menzies, said DELWP would underassess the planning scheme amendment “on its merits” to enable the incoming planning minister to make a final decision.
First published in the Mornington News – 15 November 2022
