Canberrans love our bush capital. We take pride in living in a city where critically endangered woodlands still survive, where woodland birds still call, and where places like ‘Patch GG’ in the National Arboretum connect us to something bigger than ourselves. We expect governments to protect these places — especially when they have promised to do so.
Patch GG shows how fragile those promises can be. Patch GG is a 44-hectare patch of critically endangered Box-Gum Woodland on the edge of the new suburb of Sulman. It is an environmental offset — land the ACT Government committed to protect under a legally binding federal approval so it could build suburbs like Denman Prospect and Whitlam. The deal was simple: if the government cleared Box-Gum Woodland elsewhere, it would protect Patch GG in return.
Yet the government’s own planning maps show Patch GG is zoned for future residential development, including housing, a local centre and an extension of Bindubi Street. Following the expiry date on the federal approval, 31 December 2041, its legal protection disappears.
When the Conservation Council asked the government to confirm Patch GG’s future, the Minister replied that it “will not be developed as part of the Sulman residential development”, including because it is “recognised as an established environmental offset”. On top of other broken commitments, the SLA’s willingness to develop other offsets, and with Patch GG’s zoning telling a very different story, the Conservation Council is very concerned for Patch GG’s future. The Territory Plan Map shows development is planned directly over Patch GG.
This is why Patch GG matters. It is a test of whether environmental offsets in the ACT are real protections or temporary promises.
Canberrans deserve more than unprotected offsets and disappearing woodlands. We deserve a planning system that protects nature because it is the right thing to do, not because a federal approval forces it.
You can read our Biodiversity Working Group’s full analysis on Patch GG here.
Photo: Paul Cheeseman (Friends of Grasslands): Inspecting a Greening Australia ‘scrape and sow’ site in Patch GG, National Arboretum (16 May 2026)