Landscapes in the ACT refl ect the interaction between people and the natural environment. City and urban development have led to serious and sometimes irreversible damage to basic ecological functioning of the landscape.

Many ACT landscapes are not resilient. Plans for future development must ensure that continuing intervention in the ecological and hydrological functioning of the landscapes does not increase the risk of reduced ecosystem services. The effect is cumulative – as the resilience is lost, more ecological services are lost and social and economic costs increase. Future ACT landscapes need to have long-term resilience, be self-regenerating and deliver ecosystem services. They need people actively engaged in better understanding and caring for them for future generations.

Priority needs to be given to conserving ecological processes of the more natural landscapes and mimicking them in highly modified areas. Even natural assets in poor condition may have enough potential and perceived value to warrant investment in their repair, particularly where they join fragments of better preserved bush to form larger-scale natural landscapes.

Landscapes at the boundaries that connect where people live with more natural places are particularly vulnerable to damage: they are the places where bushfires most threaten, weedy garden plants escape, cats prey, rubbish is dumped, and tracks made by bikes and people lead to compaction and erosion.

ACT residents appreciate the green corridors between and within their suburbs as open space, but many do not recognise that these open woodlands and grasslands can be valuable in other respects. ACT woodlands and grasslands comprise resilient communities of plants and animals evolved and suited to this region (e.g. native grasses resist erosion, persist longer under drought conditions, have good carbon sequestration values and are more fire resistant in summer than introduced grasses). The need to maintain integrity of the ‘bush’ is a strong reason for minimising the spread of urban areas, placing them carefully in the landscape, and limiting the length of their external boundaries.

MacKellar wetland.

MacKellar wetland.

Photos Micheal Schultz