Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00153:body:0:p44
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2019L00153
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 134347–137545

in Section 3.5. The persistence of this ecological community is likely to be critical to the survival of a number of these listed species. Consequently, ensuring Littoral Rainforest is managed sustainably is essential to maintaining its biodiversity values. Below are a number of management related factors to consider across the distribution of Littoral Rainforest.
Furthermore, ecosystems adjoining the ecological community will benefit directly and indirectly from actions to improve landscape health within Littoral Rainforest.

6.2.1      Implications for environmental assessment and conservation management:
Given the current listing status and ongoing threats to the ecological community, all sites at which the ecological community has been recorded are important and warrant protection. Likewise, all sites where there is a reasonable likelihood of the listed ecological community occurring, as indicated by vegetation mapping and modelling, are also important. The key to this is maintaining up-to-date vegetation mapping and modelling data in a creative-commons open access format, and associated reporting system.

6.2.2      Offsetting
Vegetation clearance is a major cause of past, current and future losses of biodiversity. Offsetting as a mechanism works as a trade-off between permanent immediate impacts on biodiversity and uncertain future biodiversity gains (Garrard et al. 2015). Consequently, offsetting is a last resort for biodiversity management, used only in an attempt to compensate for unavoidable damage to the ecological community. The best environmental option is to avoid clearing and activities that cause damage and death of native vegetation, particularly remnant patches of threatened ecological communities, without a compelling reason.
When considering development proposals or other activities in the vicinity of Littoral Rainforest, the mitigation hierarchy should be applied to avoid, then mitigate, then offset potential impacts on the ecological community, as follows:
      * Plan projects to avoid the need to offset, by avoiding significant impacts to the ecological community.
      * In circumstances where impacts cannot be totally avoided, then they should be minimised by:
             + retaining and avoiding damage to high quality patches, which should be managed to retain their benchmark state; and
             + protecting important habitat features, such as large mature trees or stags with hollows as these take many decades to develop and cannot be quickly replaced.
      * Where impacts are unavoidable, offsets should be used as a last resort to compensate for the adverse impacts of the action deemed unavoidable. The outcomes of offsetting activities are generally highly uncertain. Any proposals considering offsets for this ecological community should aim to:
             + minimise the need to offset the ecological community by designing development around the ecological community and applying buffer zones;
             + retain medium and higher quality patches of the ecological community, rather than offset them (particularly with lower quality offset sites);
             + focus on retaining remnants of the ecological