Property developers in Perth plan to bulldoze an endangered banksia ecosystem used by threatened black cockatoo species, and conservationists have warned the damage cannot be mitigated by proposed offsets.
The developers want to replant the banksia ecosystem within a different type of protected woodland – a proposal that a leading botanist said was doomed to fail.
The woodland to be bulldozed for three housing developments is home to species including the threatened Baudin’s and Carnaby’s black cockatoos.
Prof Kingsley Dixon, a restoration expert and the national expert on the ecosystem – known as the banksia woodlands of the Swan coastal plain – said he had “deep concerns” about the proposal to offset clearing by trying to create banksia woodlands from scratch within another woodland type in protected reserves around Perth.
Dixon said the proposals put forward for t
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