Peninsula Living caught up with Friends of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment founder and volunteer, Judith Bennett, to hear how the group continues to fight for permanent protection of our lagoon.
Judith receiving Northern Beaches Council’s 2021 Eco Award for ‘Caring for our Waterways’ on behalf of the Friends of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment group.
Since 2006, the Friends of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment Committee has been working together to see the Narrabeen Lagoon area sustainably protected.
The volunteer group has been dedicated to encouraging the State Government, along with supporting the Northern Beaches Council, in the conservation of crown lands and the sustainable protection of the bushland, creeks, and landform.
“I’ve been involved for years with the National Parks Association, which own a piece of land in Narrabeen Lagoon catchment,” Judith explains.
“And when I looked at that land, I thought it’s only viable as a conservation area, which it is at the moment, because of the linkages between the bushland and the top of Belrose.”
Friends of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment originally started when Judith and others went to see Dick Pearson, the then- administrator of Warringah Council, who arranged a seminar with the environment minister at the time to discuss the catchment area and the lagoon.
“As a result of that and, the number of people that came, there were a lot of people there who were passionate about protecting the environment. So, we established a group and initially we were a sub-committee of the National Parks Association, but then we incorporated in 2005 and became our own organisation,” Judith says.
Judith says that only 10 per cent of New South Wales land is currently in permanently protected areas, despite international agreements identifying a 30 per cent target.
“So, it’s very important to get these kinds of areas into permanent environmental protection,” she says.
Some of the activities that the Friends of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment Committee do include monitoring wildlife, flora, and fauna; the scientific monitoring of roadkill; lobbying for wildlife fences; conducting bushwalks; running educational forums and bush regeneration activities; and removing weeds and revegetating the bushland where necessary.
“The idea of the bush walks is to encourage the community to pay attention to the quality of the bushland and the variety,” she says.
“The aim behind any of our activities is to raise awareness of what we’ve got here. There’s very rich Aboriginal heritage in the Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment and we’ve worked a lot with the Metropolitan and Aboriginal Land Council to try and make sure that those areas are not being degraded.”
Some of the volunteers have also been involved in surveys to quantify the value of the biodiversity in the area and have discovered several threatened species.
Judith says some of the big challenges the group faces are to do with urban development expansion pressures, with the volunteers constantly battling with development applications (DAs).
“We are constantly writing submissions about development applications that are going in,” she says.
“The State Government has backed off from doing the Ingleside development, for instance, and that’s not the first time we’ve fought that particular one.
“It’s impressive the amount of energy that lots of people are putting into all of this and how important it is.”
Judith also says that protecting the lagoon catchment is going to become ‘increasingly important with climate change’ and the effects will mean animals might migrate to different areas, so wildlife corridor linkages ‘are very important’.
“Our local bushland is important to all sorts of people, not only to look at but to walk through, and a lot of people ride through the bush. It’s important for mental health,” she says.
In recognition of the team’s continued advocacy and dedication to educating locals on the protection of the bushland, they took home Council’s Eco Award for ‘Caring for our Waterways’ in 2021.