Hume Highway Duplication Biodiversity Offsets

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GHD was engaged by the New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) to quantify the biodiversity debits and offsets arising from vegetation clearing for the Hume Highway duplication, between Tarcutta and Mullengandra.

The environmental assessment for the project was undertaken under Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979). Under the Property Vegetation Plan (PVP) process, clearing of native vegetation at one site can be offset by condition improvements in native vegetation at another site. The purpose of this balancing process is to maintain or improve  environmental outcomes across the landscape, where clearing of low condition native vegetation is balanced by improvement of vegetation condition elsewhere. Therefore, the quality of vegetation in the landscape is maintained.

The specific scope of this commission was to:

  • Review the environmental assessments undertaken in the Part 3A of the Act assessment process, and assign PVP vegetation types and zones delineated in the ecological assessments
  • Utilise vegetation condition assessments, the duplication design and Mitchell Landscape and vegetation type layers to develop ‘vegetation zones’ as per the Environmental Outcomes Assessment Methodology (EOAM; DNR 2005) guidelines, using the biometric tool offset
  • Undertake a rapid field confirmation of vegetation type and conditions to finalise vegetation zones and gain concurrence on zones from the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC)
  • Work with DECC to populate the threatened species and bioMetric tools to quantify biodiversity debits for vegetation clearing; and
  • Provide advice on the ratio and type of offsets required to compensate for vegetation clearing associated with the Hume Highway duplication.

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