Wolli Creek national park gains additional 4.7 hectares of land to complete ‘green ribbon’
Almost five hectares of parklands has been added to the Wolli Creek regional national park – “a patch of green ribbon” which runs through dense suburbs in Sydney’s south – in the past year.
The Minns government added the additional 4.7 hectares after a $13m election commitment to complete the park, which borders Wolli Creek and was first promised by the Carr government in 1998.
“Families across Sydney’s south, including my own, love our natural parklands. This expansion of the park will provide them with even more opportunities to enjoy nature right in our own backyards,” said the NSW premier, Chris Minns.
It comes after 26 years of what Peter Stevens, vice-president of the Wolli Creek preservation society which formed in 1984, called spasmodic progress to meet the Carr government’s promise and a long-running community campaign to protect the area.
“It’s usually relied on us jumping up and down at critical periods like elections,” he said. “It has been really slow until this commitment by the present government; now things have started to move more rapidly.”
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Stevens said the extra 4.7 hectares was “a big step towards completion”.
“It’s this patch of green ribbon running towards the airport, there’s nothing else like it,” he said of the park, which provides habitat for 460 plant and animal species.
“Riverland bushland is a vanishing ecosystem; it has been eliminated almost everywhere, but particularly in the Canterbury Bankstown area, because that is one of the most densely populated areas of Sydney.”
The government said the remaining 4.9 hectares is yet to be acquired, but it will work with councils and the state’s Office of Strategic Lands to gain the final patches of the land needed to complete the park.
Of the 4.7 hectares, 2.6 was acquired from the City of Canterbury Bankstown to protect Nanny Goat Hill in Earlwood, which was saved in 1967 by a group of protesters from being flattened to gain runway fill for Sydney airport. The final 2.1 hectares was acquired by the Office of Strategic Lands.
The government said the added parkland will make it possible for Sydneysiders to walk from Bexley North to Earlwood, and Earlwood to Wolli Creek.
“It was incredibly used during Covid; people found a piece of bushland that they could walk or run in, and it’s just got to be preserved,” said Stevens.
The NSW Greens environment and planning spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said the addition to the parkland was a great step forward for the community and the environment.
“The persistence and diligent work of the Wolli Creek preservation society has been invaluable and is evidence of the power that community organisations can have,” she said.
“The final 4.9 hectares needed to complete the regional park must be prioritised to implement [a] true vision of an interconnected area that will provide some security to the critical biodiversity of the area,”