PARK WATCH Article June 2026 |

Ben Gill, Nature Conservation Campaigner, looks at events at Mount Macedon in April and why it matters for Victoria’s remaining woodlands

I’ve been to the summit of Mount Macedon many times. The Montane Grassy Woodland up there, dominated by Snow Gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora), is not like what you find in the alpine high country. It’s something stranger and older. Lowland Ice Age relics, survivors of a population that once stretched far more widely across Australia, before the climate warmed and their range contracted.

Just 21 hectares of the community remains in central and western Victoria. Mount Macedon and one distant peak in the Grampians/Gariwerd. Snow Gums live in other places in the west, but not in a plant community like this, which makes it even more important.

In April 2026, a big patch of the remaining community was destroyed.

How the clearing happened

Parks Victoria called it the Mount Macedon Memorial Cross View Lines Reinstatement Project. The pitch was simple: remove trees to restore views to the Memorial Cross. We respect this important, heritage listed war memorial. And the forest living around it should also be respected.

The community pushed back hard. When Parks Victoria applied to Macedon Ranges Shire Council to clear forest, they received over 60 formal objections. Councillors weighed impacts against nature protection laws and voted 6-3 against the clearing.

Parks Victoria appealed to VCAT. Then, unexpectedly, they abandoned the appeal and took a completely different path. In May 2025, they asked the Planning Minister to have the project declared a State Project. Under this pathway, standard planning rules don’t apply. Council isn’t consulted and the community gets no say.

Macedon Ranges Shire Council wasn’t even told the application had been made. The application sat with Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny for nearly ten months. It was approved in April 2026, under laws designed for hospitals and freeways, not the destruction of rare plant communities.

Twelve days later, the chainsaws started.

What was destroyed

Three weeks before works started, Alpine Ash (Eucalyptus delegatensis) forests were listed as an Endangered community under federal nature laws. In what followed, Alpine Ash were cut down and Dwarf Silver Wattles (Acacia nanodealbata), Vulnerable under state nature laws, were smashed.

Snow Gums at Mount Macedon have adapted over thousands of years to this mountain, this elevation, these soils. After fire, they resprout slowly from their bases, recovery that can take decades. The trees killed in April had been slowly recovering since the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires. Now they’re gone. And all remaining stumps have been poisoned.

A similar clearing took place near the Macedon Tearooms in 2014 with no public offset or compliance record. In 2025, Forest Fire Management Victoria completely destroyed approximately 6.5 hectares in the park. Each clearing stacks on top of the last. For a community of just 21 hectares, that accumulation is existential.

False heritage justification 

Here’s where it gets even worse. Throughout the whole process – in their community fact sheets, on their website, and presumably in the application to the Planning Minister – Parks Victoria claimed the Victorian Heritage Register listing of the Memorial Cross required views toward Melbourne.

Heritage Victoria, who’re responsible for that heritage listing, said the registration doesn’t protect or even reference views. The National Trust of Australia (Victoria) independently reviewed the same documents and reached the same conclusion. The trees were cleared for a heritage obligation that doesn’t exist.

Where things stand

When the clearing started, community members gathered. Parks Victoria officers warned them they could be arrested. Between 60 and 70 people rallied on the slopes below the trees. But after they left, late on a Friday afternoon the machines were fired up. The community found out Saturday morning through social media. All remaining tree stumps were poisoned, extinguishing any possibility of resprouting.

This destruction sets a very poor precedent. We’ve asked the Planning Minister to provide reasons for her decision. We’ve referred the clearing under federal nature laws. We’ve written to the new Environment Minister to ask for a binding restoration plan and a biodiversity offset. We’ve also written to Parks Victoria’s Chief Executive demanding they correct every public document that misrepresents the heritage registration.

What happened at Mount Macedon is a test of what nature protection laws mean when a government agency decides they’re inconvenient. The outcome will permeate well beyond this mountain.

Email your elected representatives to ask why this happened, and to make sure what comes next benefits nature.