www.livingwiththebush.org tries to stop Brumby's new suburban land-clearing laws

Today is a dark day for native vegetation and the environment

Website - http://livingwiththebush.org/dp/
Today (Thursday 3rd Sept) Brumby bulldozed amendments to the Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley Regional Strategy Plan.

This was pushed through both houses of parliament with less than one days notice so the Government can soon remove vegetation protection to allow:
- clearing of all trees and vegetation within 10m of a house
- clearing a 4m wide strip of all vegetation along each property boundary
- clearing any vegetation except trees between 10m and 30m from a house;

from all of Victoria except the 20 urban councils around Melbourne proper.

Devastating impact

This will have a devastating impact in many areas of Victoria where many communities live with in a bushland setting.

And the evidence is that doing this will not make us safe from bushfire.
There are examples from Black Saturday of houses without any nearby vegetation that burnt, of fires that raced through short grass fields to ignite buildings. Houses located more than 380 metres from continous bush were lost.

Vegetation can also act as an essential windbreak, reducing the wind that intensifies fires, and may provide protection from radiant heat as well as slowing down or stopping embers.

Yet the Brumby government intends to allow this clearing until the final recommendations of the Bushfire Commission are released next year.

This will encourage unneighbourly behaviour

By then everyone who has been endeavouring to clear their block for any reason, including gaining a better view will have done so. We will have lost forever even more of our biodiversity and dumped more green house gases into the atmosphere.

The Living With The Bush Coalition has been formed to campaign against this proposal. We believe that this unfettered clearing is fundamentally flawed in that it will not protect houses from bushfires, may in fact increase the danger by creating more intense fires and will destroy the reason so many of us live with the bush.

Read our charter, "Living with the Bush"

You can read our charter at as well as more information on this issue, why we have reached this position and what you can do.

If you support the views expressed in the charter please consider endorsing it, either individually or as on behalf of a group.

You can register your support at the website.

With a large community outcry I hope we can get these unilateral changes modified to something that will protect our lives instead of just removing trees.

Please forward this on to your networks to help build the Living with the Bush Coalition,

best regards
Louis Delacretaz
0407 300 188