Document Actions

Natural Areas Asset Management Plan (NAAMP)

The City Of Melville’s Natural Areas Asset Management Plan (NAAMP) provides the context, and technical and policy framework for the management of all natural area reserves within the City.

There are 55 natural area reserves ranging in size from less than 1 hectare to almost 50 hectares.  Previously the City developed individual management plans for reserves which included all available contextual and management information.  This has resulted in:

  • the repetition of common information (e.g. climate);
  • inconsistencies in common information between plans (e.g. due to the evolution of best practice, policy and legislation between preparation of individual plans);
  •  inconsistencies in format and content; and
  • management recommendations being formulated at the scale of individual reserves, rather than strategically across many reserves.

 

The main objective for the NAAMP is the establishment of a consistent, holistic planning methodology that achieves and maintains a cohesive approach to managing all natural areas across the organisation.  It identifies the:

1.       assets that are priorities for maintenance and enhancement (and therefore protection from threats);

2.       threats that impact upon those assets; and

3.       strategies that document techniques for threat management.

 

Further to this, it outlines the:

  •  the scope and format of 11 guidelines and strategies to manage threats to biodiversity; and
  •  the scope and format for 15 strategic reserve plans that will document assets and threats, and the application of strategies, for individual larger and groups of smaller reserves.

 

The benefits of this approach are that:

  • the NAAMP will serve as an overarching management document for natural area reserves on a City-wide scale;
  • the threat management strategies will serve as guiding documents across all reserves; and
  • natural area reserves within the City will continue to have individual management plans, however, they will be more and targeted and will refer to their specific site conditions.

 The guidelines and strategic plans will be developed and formalised in coming years.  In the interim, existing management plans will continue to be utilised.