Members of the South Coast community group, Dalmeny Matters, have been threatened with legal action if they continue to enter a privately-owned parcel of bushland that has been earmarked for a residential subdivision.
Solicitors representing a Sydney development company have sent a letter to the group threatening legal action at a Supreme Court level in response to efforts by volunteers to collect data on threatened species living within the 159-acre (645,700 square metre) site west of Dalmeny.

There is no lack of will from locals to find a solution, but with 80 per cent of the area covered in protected forest and coastline, the pressing question is: Where are new houses going to go — especially when it involves bulldozing much-loved bushland?

We wrote to Councillors on January 28, to raise concerns about the sale of Council land in Dalmeny. We called for Council to halt the preparation of the Master Plan and Development Control Plan for the area as concerning information has come to light.

Council announced the sale of over 40 Ha of public land to developer Andrew Scarano in October last year. However new information shows that the address used by Council in all meetings and reporting, 16 Tatiara St, is incorrect, and actually describes a 3 bedroom house rather than a huge area of native bush land.

Letter to the Editor - The Beagle Weekly

Excerpt “No show from the G.M or any of others of the Executive Leadership Team. There were however two Divisional Managers, from the next tier down of council management present. There were also two more staff from the engineering area, and two from the planning team.”

Dalmeny residents were out in force despite a very rainy Saturday to show how much they care about protecting 100 Ha of native bush land now facing development.

Concerned residents met with candidates from the Mayne Team, Eurobodalla Labour and Eurobodalla Greens to lend support to Dalmeny Matters campaign to reclaim community land and protect the threatened species that have been identified as depending on the bush corridor.

Eurobodalla Council are requesting submissions to the draft Estuaries Coastal Management Program for Moruya River, Mummaga Lake and Wagonga Inlet with the closing date for submissions being Wednesday 5 January 2022, 4.30pm

When asked in the meeting as to why this was being prepared and exhibited you will recall the Director responded to the effect ‘ it was to enable the securing of grant funding to carry out the identified works’

Contracts of sale were exchanged last week, with the director of Heppa Constructions saying he was excited to secure the site, his first south coast development.

Council candidates for the upcoming local elections have thrown their support behind a community group's campaign to stop the sale of 40 hectares of land in Dalmeny.

An Independent inquiry from 2002, Commissioned by the State Government, classified Mummaga Lake in Dalmeny as in need of ‘significant protection’, including recommendations to

“Limit any new urban and rural residential development to within the existing boundaries of such developed areas’” in order to preserve and restore critical natural ecosystems .

Some of the Dalmeny Matters team met up with Justin Field MP and Alex Ellinghausen photographer from Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday for a tour of the bushland we are trying to save.

The Dalmeny Matters Working Group will be preparing a research paper identifying all the State Government legislation and Council policy papers that the Council has to comply with when approving any development on this scale.

We are working with an ecologist and other volunteers with knowledge of plants and animals to add evidence of Yellow Bellied Gliders and Glossy Black Cockatoos living and feeding in the area to the Atlas of Living Australia,