Redwood Park

Why destroy Redwood Park with 20 to 30km of mountain bike trails?

Toowoomba has some magnificent bushland escarpment parks that are easily accessible along the top of the range.

Probably the best known is Picnic Point with its fabulous views, restaurant and easily accessible walking tracks.

Another, Tabletop, provides both views and a challenge to those who scramble up the steep scree slopes to its flat grassy summit.

Duggan Park is being developed to provide nature experiences and a lookout over tabletop with a focus on visitors with disabilities.

Jubilee Park is known for its mountain bike trails. Redwood Park is an ecological gold mine ready to take up eco tourism opportunities.

What is so special about Redwood Park?

Well it contains 90 hectares of endangered dry rainforest with a number of endangered fauna and flora within it, including black breasted button quail, grey headed flying foxes, powerful owls and numerous other species, many of which are not found in the other escarpment parks.

It contains the beautiful Ferny Gully with its small waterfalls. It contains the historic Eaglenest depression camp of the 1930s.

In December the Toowoomba Regional Council approved the construction of kilometres of dedicated mountain bike trails through the edge of the dry rainforest.

According to the consultant employed by the Toowoomba Regional Council and the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, the 313 hectare Jubilee Park could only support about 68 kilometres of mountain bike trails. He recommended the remaining 30 kilometres of trails be constructed in the 243 hectare Redwood Park.

At a public meeting in October with council staff and the consultant, I suggested that the proposed dedicated mountain bike trails be moved further to the west and south to avoid the environmentally sensitive and culturally significant areas. This proposal was turned down as unsuitable.

The proposed trails area in Redwood is currently being surveyed by professional ecologists.

Already numerous platelets of the vulnerable black breasted button quail have been found directly along the proposed trails route.

These birds are super sensitive to any intrusion into their habitat.

Moving the trails further west brings them into direct conflict with the Ferny Gully area. Moving them further west again brings them through the culturally significant Eaglenest Depression Camp of the 1930s. Further west has been deemed unsuitable by the consultant.

Redwood Park has such a long ecological history. Right back in the 1890s the citizens of Toowoomba presented a petition to the state government to have 2000 acres of the Toowoomba Range Escarpment protected for future generations of Toowoomba residents. In 1910/11, Redwood Park was named and declared as a sanctuary for birds and animals.

With the devastation brought about by recent drought and bushfires to people’s property, our native forests and woodlands and the deaths of so much of Australia’s wildlife, we should jealously guard any remaining habitat, especially those that are environmentally significant.

And here we have a park that is so close to the city and yet very few of Toowoomba’s own residents know about it.

If the proposed dedicated mountain bike trails go ahead, what an eyesore they will be when Redwood Park is viewed from Picnic Point.

Unfortunately, our current councillors are not known for their environmental empathy. We have not had a councillor that is sympathetic to our natural environment since Sue Englart.

Our vast region does not even have a Land For Wildlife officer.

Very shortly the council’s Ramsay St Nursery will be shifted to Charlton and the volunteers who help out each Tuesday have been told that they are no longer needed.

How disgustingly short sighted.

Is this because the councillors don’t want them or is it because senior bureaucrats have made the decision that they are not needed and our councillors do not have the will to go against them.

Our current councillors seem to have no problem speaking on development issues.

With the local government elections at the end of this month, let’s hope we elect some candidates willing to support environmental issue in our region.

We now have a council-endorsed Green Infrastructure Strategy document which is supposed to guide decision making over the next years.

I hope it does not go the way of the previous plans and proposals. HUGH KRENSKE, Toowoomba