Flood-prone frog habitat slated for industrial expansion

The Byron Arts & Industry Estate would expand onto the other side of Ewingsdale Road under a new project before Byron Council which is currently on public exhibition.

But the land in question is home to group of frog species that includes the nationally protected wallum sedge frog.

The $4.3m development is slated for 22B Maleluca Drive, a greenfield site opposite the existing industrial estate, and next to the upcoming West Byron development.

If approved by Byron Council, the project would see 74,000 cubic metres of fill trucked in to make the flood-prone land suitable for a 17-lot light industrial hub.

The DA was prepared by Planit Consulting, and its statement of environmental effects says, ‘The new light industrial lots will assist in meeting the strong demand for additional employment land, with the property noted in Council’s Business and Industrial Land Strategy 2020 (BILS), as the only undeveloped appropriately zoned land in Byron Bay’.

The industrial lots on the site would range in size from 1,447m² to 13,897m², and would lie adjacent to a new drainage reserve at the south of the property, which would contain a new stormwater basin.

The Biodiversity Development Assessment Report accompanying the development application concluded that avoidance and mitigation measures were such that ‘the development will not have significant impacts on local biodiversity values’.

However, the same report also reveals that the property contains areas of habitat for acid frogs. 

Threatened species

According to the University of Queensland, this is a group of ‘highly specialised and threatened species endemic to the acidic coastal wallum wetlands of eastern Australia, that include the Cooloola sedge frog, wallum rocket frog, wallum froglet, and the nationally protected wallum sedge frog’.