Council proposes road extension through protected wildlife sanctuary

Since it was established nearly a decade ago, the Wandiyali-Environa Wildlife Sanctuary has become an ecological haven.

It is home to a variety of native plants and animals, many of them rare or endangered.

Box-gum grassy woodland, gang-gang cockatoos and pink-tailed worm lizards are all there, and a koala was sighted earlier this year — a rare species in the ACT region.

"We've seen an amazing response here," Carolyn Larkham, Wandiyali's environmental coordinator and landowner said.

"We're still getting new sightings of plants and animals … There are these species that we know are regionally very rare, and they're all represented here in this one place."

The natural ecosystem is near the growing Googong and Jerrabomberra region, where residents have hoped for decades for better road infrastructure to connect the area to Canberra and the ACT. 

The Queanbeyan-Palerang council endorsed its preferred road route last week, after ongoing debate and a consultant's report into the various development options.

Known as option five, the road will cut through the wildlife sanctuary.

Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council Mayor Kenrick Winchester said it was the only viable choice.

"We will now be proceeding with getting the studies done to try to prove to the New South Wales Minister for Environment that the road must and should only go via that option five," he said.

The council's preferred option is more expensive than several others, but the consultant report showed it had a higher cost-benefit ratio.

Ms Larkham said the choice was disappointing, given there were alternative routes available and other recommendations made.

Conservation Council ACT biodiversity working group chair Matt Whitting said he understood residents' commuting needs, but there had been 25 years of conservation work at the protected sanctuary.

"We've got a lot of sympathy with the residents of Googong, who've been told for decades that this might be possible and that might be possible," he said. 

"But this place has been set aside securely, legally protected, and we can't afford to just keep squandering opportunities to protect really high conservation value places like this one."

Cr Winchester said council wanted to limit damage to the stewardship site, and it was a "delicate balance between the environment and the needs of the population.

He said that all the options for the road route were "problematic", but council would not support a route through existing suburban development.

"The council made it very clear that they do not want the road to impact on houses and on people and where they live," he said.

"We would much prefer to have a small impact on that sanctuary site than potentially have to knock down, compulsorily acquire houses that people have spent generations growing up in."

The Queanbeyan-Palerang council will take its case to the New South Wales government.

The government is not expected to decide on the proposal until at least mid-next year.

It is a decision that Ms Larkham said must be made in the interests of the natural environment.

"We have community programs with Jerrabomberra High School and University of Canberra, and we have community engagement through our wildflower walks," she said.

"Habitat fragmentation is such a death of a thousand cuts to these sorts of areas."