Mount Lofty is a very special place, right on the edge of the Toowoomba Escarpment. It’s a place of forests, permanent springs and Toowoomba’s only waterfall.

We, the Mt. Lofty community, see and hear koalas here all the time. Malcolm and Belle have a special place in our hearts because they’re breeding right now. We want to see little baby koalas here. Australia needs that to happen very, very badly.

It’s not just koalas either. There are lots of other animals here too, such as echidnas, wallabies, kangaroos, goannas, small mammals, bats, reptiles and frogs. The bird life is amazing.  

But that’s about to change.

This land has escaped the developers only because it’s an ex-Rifle Range and has been owned by the Department of Defence for over 100 years.

But now our Federal government wants to clear all the land that’s flat enough to build on, including 38 hectares (that’s 76 football fields) of Critical Koala Habitat. They’ll bulldoze the forest and cram the bare dirt with 342 houses and villas, on blocks down to 300m2.

Few of these houses are for the Defence force. An independent consultant says most of them will go to investors and second home-owners.

They even want their own special planning code so they can get away with it.

It’s not too late though!

Right now, the Toowoomba Regional Councillors have this application sitting on their desks. They have the environmental grounds in the planning code to reject this development and save the koalas, and all the animals, on this land.

The community has been fighting this for over two years now. Time is running out – the decision could come any time within the next few months.

Please tell the people doing this that we just cannot keep on this way. We have lost over a billion animals in the fires. Koalas are slow and many of them were burned to death.

We cannot afford to lose more animals, especially when this land was never paid for and doesn’t have to be destroyed for one-off financial gain.

 

Tell our Federal Member Dr. John McVeigh to represent his community! He is a member of the government responsible for this development john.mcveigh.mp@aph.gov.au

Contact our Mayor, Paul Antonio, on paul.antonio@tr.qld.gov.au

You can also contact Sussan Ley, our Environment Minister, via this link: http://sussanley.com/contact-2/

Or Our Defence Minister, 

Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC, on
senator.reynolds@aph.gov.au

PLEASE sign and share!

Thank you,

The Mt. Lofty Community

And thanks to Rachelle Patterson for her wonderful pictures. If you’d like to see more, check us out on Facebook Save Mt. Lofty! https://www.facebook.com/groups/233468220673095/

We also have an Instagram page

https://instagram.com/savemtlofty?igshid=14bssnms4tori