Blue Gum High Forest home

Blue Gum High Forest Group

Critically endangered community

Flora and fauna

Heritage significance

Site history
Blue Gum High Forest, St Ives

With great relief of many, the long-running campaign to protect Blue Gum High Forest in St Ives has been successful.

At heart was the proposed development of the two remaining lots of privately-owned land, within the largest, most viable remnant of Blue Gum High Forest in existence. At the start of the campaign, it consisted of:
  • Dalrymple Hay Nature Reserve - 11.1 ha
  • Browns Forest - 4.6 ha
  • 100-102 Rosedale Road - 1.06 ha
  • Vista Street Reserve - 0.5 ha
  • Sydney Water (reservoir) - 1.5 ha
Sydney Blue Gum, Blue Gum High Forest, St Ives
(photo: Jane Gye)
The campaign owes its success to:
  • the Blue Gum High Forest Group, a coalition of concerned groups which formed to preserve this critically endangered ecological community for perpetuity, and
  • the generous support of the public, private enterprise and state and federal government and its politicians.
Particular mention and many thanks must be extended to STEP members Nancy Pallin, Neroli Lock and Andrew Little, whom over many years have injected much time and effort into the Blue Gum High Forest Group and the campaign.

Blue Gum High Forest landholdings, St Ives
Blue Gum High Forest, St Ives: landholdings in 2004
(Base air photo image © Department of Lands 2006)

Sydney Blue Gum, Blue Gum High Forest, St Ives
(photo: Jane Gye)
In December 2007, Ku-ring-gai Council negotiated successfully to purchase 102 Rosedale Road, assisted by a $350,000 contribution from the Commonwealth National Reserve System and over $72,000 of public donations.

100 Rosedale Road was purchased for conservation in October 2005 by the NSW Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation. TIDC transferred the land to the Department of Enviroment and Climate Change in an 'environmental offset' deal, to allow the removal of a small tract of forest for railway expansion in Hornbsy.

Blue Gum High Forest Discovery Kits are available to schools and other interested parties from Friends of Lane Cove National Park. For more information about the BGHF Discovery Kit, visit their website or e-mail folcnp@hotmail.com.

Links
Media release:  Malcolm Turnbull MP and Brendan Nelson MP announce additional funding from the Australian Government to help protect Blue Gum High Forest in St Ives (October 2007).
Go to:  Threatened species, populations and ecological communities: Blue Gum High Forest, NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change, September 2005.
Go to:  Nationally Threatened Species and Ecological Communities Information Sheet,
Department of the Environment and Heritage, September 2005