City of Gold Coast launches strategy to protect natural environment

The City of Gold Coast has launched its latest ‘Our Natural City Strategy’, continuing its commitment to protecting the city’s biodiversity and natural environment.  

As one of the most biodiverse cities in Australia, the Gold Coast’s natural environment is the heartbeat of the city, with approximately 13,636 hectares of City-owned conservation estate - an area equivalent to over 19,000 football fields.

Despite being one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, the Gold Coast has retained over half of the city in native vegetation and undertaken three strategic land acquisitions over the last two years, contributing an additional 57.8 hectares to connect critical nature corridors and working towards the City’s target of 51% native vegetation cover.

Mayor Tom Tate notes “we live in one of the most beautiful places on earth and it’s up to all of us to protect and enhance our naturally unique city.

“With the need to enable sustainable growth of the city, the Our Natural City Strategy update has never been more important.”

“As part of the strategy, over the next decade we will deliver actions that restore our environment, protect our precious wildlife and their habitat and provide more experiences for people to enjoy nature.”

A City community survey revealed that out of the six Council Plan themes, protecting our ‘Naturally unique’ city was the number one priority.

The strategy has been co-created with partners and the community to make sure the right actions are in place, so that everyone can play their part in protecting the Gold Coast environment.

The strategy will require ongoing partnerships between government, businesses, research institutions, landowners and the community to protect and enhance our natural city.

There were more than 129,000 conservation volunteer hours contributed to preserve the environment on the Gold Coast over the last five years.

The Gold Coast has…

• 4524.8 hectares of World-Heritage listed Gondwana Rainforest

• 12,629.6 hectares of Ramsar sites

• 758km of bush trails

• 52km of open coastline

• 171km of navigable waterways

• 60,327.15 hectares of native vegetation corridor connectivity

• 3,032 native animal species including 73 animals that are threatened

Our Natural City Strategy focus is to Explore and Discover our diverse natural environment, Protect and Enhance the natural environment network, and Connect and Partner with all who have a part to play to care for Country.  For more information visit Our Natural City.

Images. Stills from video. Credit: City of Gold Coast