Overview

The purpose of a Coastal and Marine Management Plan is to describe how the City of Greater Geelong, working with Traditional Owners, neighbouring land managers and the community, will manage coastal and marine areas across the Greater Geelong region in accordance with the Marine and Coastal Act 2018.

This is the first of two plans that the City will prepare:

1. Southeast Bellarine Coast (4W-Collendina) Coastal and Marine Management Plan

2. Corio Bay - Coastal and Marine Management Plan (in preparation)

Together, both plans set the strategic direction for the management of Crown land coastal areas in the Greater Geelong Local Government Area.

The cornerstone of these plans is an ongoing need to recognise, protect and enhance our natural areas and infrastructure and enhance community assets. The plans are informed by the views of Traditional Owners, a highly engaged community, private landholders, land managers and stakeholders. The City is committed to genuinely partnering and meaningfully engaging with Wadawurrung Traditional Owners to support the protection of their Country, the maintenance of spiritual and cultural practices and the implementation of their Healthy Country Plan: Paleert Tjaara Dja – Let’s make country good together 2020–2030.

To meet the needs of this environmentally significant coastal environment, the plans will focus on collaborative management of the landscape, as well as objectives for best-practice action. As well as factoring in the increasing impacts of sea-level rise caused by climate change, it also considers the needs of an ever-growing number of locals and visitors, whose love for the Geelong and Bellarine coastline must be balanced against the need to protect the area for the benefit of future generations.

Coastal and Marine Management Plan areas

Coastal and Marine Management Plan areas

Southeast Bellarine Coast Coastal and Marine Management Plan

The Southeast Bellarine Coast (4W-Collendina) CMMP 2023-2033 has been endorsed by Council on Tuesday 25 October 2022.

The Southeast Bellarine Coast 4W - Collendina forms part of the Bellarine Peninsula Southern Coast, which is an area of State Significance. Other neighbouring coastal managers include Barwon Coast Committee of Management (west of Collendina) and the Borough of Queenscliffe (east of 4W). The City, the Project Steering Group and Community Representative Group present the Southeast Bellarine Coast 4W-Collendina Coastal and Marine Management Plan (CMMP). Extensive community consultation (values, issues and opportunities) for the Southeast Bellarine Coastal project informed the Plan.

Since 2021, we have been working towards developing a management plan for the Southeast Bellarine Coast region, which includes the foreshore dune running from 4W at Fellows Rd, Point Lonsdale, through Buckley Park Foreshore Reserve to Collendina at Bonnyvale Rd. We also wanted the plan to consider the connectivity of the coastal lakes of the Lonsdale Lake Wildlife Reserve, moonah woodland and adjoining foreshore areas, which all work together to form an important landscape-scale biolink.

Funding for this project was initiated with a community budget bid from the Ocean Grove Community Association, with the City aiming to establish the CMMP and then a Master Plan for the broader Southeast Bellarine Biolink region.

The Bellarine Peninsula Southern Coast, proposed as an area of State Significance (from the Distinctive Area and Landscapes) spans from Queenscliff in Port Phillip Bay, through Buckley Park Foreshore Reserve, on to the mouth of the Barwon River, and beyond to Breamlea.

There are three foreshore managers along the Bellarine Peninsula coastline:

  1. the Barwon Coast Committee of Management – oversee the coastal Crown land reserve west of Bonnyvale Rd (at Collendina), through to 42W (at the west end of Thirteenth Beach), which includes the lower Barwon River
  2. the City of Greater Geelong – manage Collendina east to 4W and
  3. the Borough of Queenscliffe – manage 4W through to the Point Lonsdale Lighthouse, and into Port Phillip Bay

Barwon Coast has an approved CMMP in place and the Borough have a draft CMMP - see links on side panel. Together with the City's Southeast Bellarine Coast (4W-Collendina) CMMP this will complete the foreshore management plans for the Bellarine Peninsula Southern Coast.

Vision: Healthy and resilient coastal and marine ecosystems where nature thrives, whilst fostering cultural connection and community stewardship.

OBJECTIVES

1. Acknowledge Traditional Owners’ rights, aspirations & knowledge

2. Protect & enhance the marine & coastal environment

3a. Respect natural processes

3b. Strengthen resilience to climate change

4. Use and develop sustainably

5. Promote stewardship and collaborative management

Understand, acknowledge and act upon rights and aspirations of Traditional Owners groups for Country.

Protect and enhance intrinsic values, and goods and benefits, of the marine and coastal environment.

Understand dynamic natural processes in planning for, and managing, risks to people and assets.

Understand current and future stressors and assess how well marine and coastal environments can cope with, and adapt to, change, and how that can be strengthened

Consider impacts and benefits of existing, as well as new, use and development on the environment, other users and prosperity of future generations.

Take a stewardship approach, build understanding and knowledge, engage and collaborate.

VALUES, ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES: How the local context is shaping our response (refer page 20)

OUTCOMES: What we want coastal and marine management to achieve (refer page 36)

ACTIONS: How we will achieve the outcomes (refer page 38)

RESOURCE NEEDS: What we need to support sustainable marine and coastal management (refer page 42)

IMPLEMENTATION: How we will track progress and identify opportunities for refinement (refer page 43)

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