Mayor’s Message - Friday 5 April 2024

This week we launched the Draft Ballarat Biodiversity Strategy – Healing Country Together for the community’s review and feedback.  

Biodiversity is the variety of life, including the various animals, plants, fungi, and even microorganisms like bacteria, that make up our natural world.  

We look forward to implementing the Biodiversity Strategy and achieving outcomes that will ensure we improve the way we care for and restore a healthy environment.

This draft strategy maps out a future for biodiversity across our municipality and outlines actions that will protect and strengthen Ballarat’s natural environment.  

I am proud that this strategy has been co-designed with Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Owners. It was also developed with extensive community feedback, including a Young People’s forum late last year.  

The four key recommendations for the Draft Ballarat Biodiversity Strategy – Healing Country Together includes:  

• Keeping and adding more plantings while raising the capacity of the City of Ballarat and the community to support biodiversity in the short term.  
• Increasing the community’s value of the natural environment to help community groups, the City of Ballarat and authorities improve biodiversity, helping to unlock appetite for bigger projects.  
• Building capacity within the City of Ballarat and to determine priority areas for protection and investment to see larger biodiversity gains in the medium to long-term.
• Landscape scale restoration to ensure biodiversity survives and thrives in the Ballarat region with climate change.

I thank the community for having their say in the first round of community consultation and encourage you all to provide feedback on the draft strategy.  

You can provide feedback on the Draft Ballarat Biodiversity Strategy until 5pm, Tuesday 30 April at mysay.ballarat.vic.gov.au.

You can also pick-up a printed copy of the survey at City of Ballarat sites, including Customer Service and Ballarat Libraries.

- Mayor Cr Des Hudson