The Biodiversity Conservation Act gives the Minister the power to receive nominations from local government for land to be added to the Biodiversity Values Map.
The Minister must be convinced that the nominated land will be of bioregional or state significance. The Environment Agency Head must also approve the nominated land.
The Department of Planning and Environment is currently developing guidelines to facilitate the inclusion of council-nominated areas into the Biodiversity Values Map.
Use of the Biodiversity Values Map for informing Local Environmental Plans Terrestrial Biodiversity Maps
Local environmental plans can include a clause requiring the council to consider, before determining an application for development on land on their local environmental plan biodiversity map, the impacts of the development and measures to avoid, minimise or mitigate the impacts. Councils may be interested in using the Biodiversity Values Map to inform the development and update of their local environmental plan biodiversity maps.
The department has developed the Biodiversity Values Map under Biodiversity Conservation Act for a specific purpose: to calculate whether a clearing proposal activates the Biodiversity Offsets Scheme. Development proposals exceeding the Biodiversity Offset Scheme threshold are required to have a Biodiversity Development Assessment Report prepared and offset impacts in addition to any requirements that the council may impose under the local environmental plan. The Biodiversity Values Map is regularly updated and progressively refined.
Local environmental plan biodiversity maps are not required to be consistent with the Biodiversity Values Map, and councils can include any land they consider having important biodiversity values for their area. Councils can use the Biodiversity Values Map to inform the development and updating of their local environmental plan biodiversity map.
The spatial data for the current Biodiversity Values Map can be accessed through the Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data (SEED) Portal.