Government budgets $180m for new Sydney airport site conservation

The federal government will spend $180m on a ‘biodiversity offset package’ for the planned new Western Sydney airport.

The Badgerys Creek airport site. Picture: Hollie Adams

The federal government will spend $180 million on a “bio­diversity offset package” for the planned new Western Sydney airport to make up for clearing “small pockets of open eucalypt woodland and shrubland” that it describes as being in “generally poor condition”.

The figure is about 10 per cent of government estimates of the total initial cost of the airport, and equivalent to the budget for the Malaysia Airlines MH370 search. The government will also go to significant lengths to deal with ­Aboriginal heritage at the Badgerys Creek site, creating a “keeping place” for artefacts and conservation of “a grinding groove and a scarred tree”.

The commitments are contained in fact sheets released yesterday for the environmental impact statement for the proposed airport, which is expected to open by the mid-2020s.

“While vegetation and fauna habitat at the airport site is in a generally poor condition, there are valuable fragments of ecological communities,” the bio­diversity fact sheet says.

Construction during phase 1 would involve removing 1150ha of vegetation, of which 318ha is ­native. “The removal of vegetation will have a direct impact on some threatened flora and fauna species and ecological communities listed under both commonwealth and NSW legislation,” it says. “This includes the Cumberland Plain Woodland, the Grey-headed Flying-fox, Cumberland Plain Land Snail, and the native plants pultenaea parviflora and marsdenia viridiflora subs. viridiflora.”

The EIS says the government is worried that bird and bat strikes — which can lead to aircraft engine failure — could adversely affect such wildlife. The government envisages staged vegetation removal during construction, plans for salvaging fauna and habitat resources, relocation programs for threatened flora and fauna species, and establishing a 117ha environmental conservation zone on the airport site to conserve river bank corridors and “other features of high environmental value.”

Government estimates of the cost of the airport’s first phase were originally $1.7 billion, while more recent commercial estimates have put it at up to $5bn.