Reserves

There are over 650ha of significant bush and wetland reserves located throughout the Shire and over 800km of roadside reserves. They are diverse in their flora and fauna, and many contain rare or threatened species.

Council's Environmental Works Unit is responsible for managing the Council-owned, environmentally significant reserves and some areas of Crown Land where Council is the Committee of Management.

Council’s significant environmental reserves include the Panton Hill Bushland Reserve System (PHBRS).  The PHBRS constitutes seven individual reserves spanning 140 hectares of bushland in the Watsons Creek catchment near the townships of Panton Hill and Smiths Gully.  The Reserve System supports a high diversity of indigenous plants and contains, in places, high quality examples of intact vegetation communities. This vegetation provides excellent fauna habitat and the area has been identified as having State Faunal Significance due to the presence and diversity of significant fauna species. 

Council has management plans, as well as flora and fauna records, for a number of environmentally significant reserves.  Additional information and copies of management documentation (where available) for reserves is available upon request.

Wetlands 

Council has created several new wetlands while undertaking a major program to protect the Shire's most significant natural wetlands.  Unfortunately, there has been a dramatic reduction in natural wetland area since European settlement.  Council, in conjunction with Parks Victoria, is actively working to protect and enhance these important natural assets.

Lenister Farm Wetland

Murrays Land Wetland