STATE
The cadastre and aerial imagery
Where the lot boundaries actually sit, the lot on plan that names the property in every other system, and photography clear enough to count the trees.
Held by the State government
+ WHY THIS EXISTS
Nature's data is everywhere. That is the problem.
The information about what lives on and around a Queensland property is real, and nearly all of it is public. It is also scattered. It sits in different departments, in different map viewers and databases, at three levels of government, and each piece was built to answer somebody else's question.
So nobody hands it to the people who make the day-to-day decisions. The household deciding whether to clear a tree, fence a paddock or spray a weed along the boundary is the one who changes the habitat, and they are the last to be told what is there.
See where the pieces live ↓01 / THE PIECES
Where the pieces live.
Eleven front doors, none of them yours.
Every source below is public.
Each one has its own map, its own words and its own custodian.
STATE
Regional ecosystem mapping
Which native vegetation community a patch of bush belongs to, given as a code. Look that code up in the Regional Ecosystem Description Database and it tells you the trees, the soils and the wildlife that go with it.
Held by the environment department
STATECOUNCIL
Koala habitat mapping
Which land is mapped as koala habitat, and the state conservation plan sitting behind the map. Most people meet it as a condition on a planning approval rather than as a map.
Mapped by the State, applied through council planning approvals
STATE
Vegetation management categories
The category a patch of vegetation falls into, which is what decides whether clearing it is regulated, exempt or needs a permit. Same trees as the ecosystem map, different question, different map.
Held by a different State department again
STATE
The flora survey trigger map
The high-risk areas where a plant survey has to happen before anyone clears, and the protected plants rules that follow from it. A quiet map with real teeth.
Held by the State
STATE
WildNet species records
Decades of sightings and survey records of animals and plants, each one with a date and a location. The closest thing there is to a list of who lives around here.
Held by the State
FEDERAL
Threatened species under the EPBC Act
Which species and ecological communities are protected nationally, and how serious that protection is. A listing made in Canberra can change what is allowed on one suburban block.
Held by the Commonwealth
NATIONALSTATE
Weed and invasive plant lists
The Weeds of National Significance list, plus Queensland's restricted and prohibited invasive plants. Some of these carry a legal duty to act, which is news to most people who have one growing on the fence line.
The national list, and Queensland's from the agriculture department
COUNCIL
Planning schemes and local laws
Zoning, environmental overlays, protected trees, and the local rules on things like dogs and cats. The layer closest to the household, and the one that changes most from one boundary to the next.
Held by your council
COMMUNITY
Landcare and catchment groups
What is actually happening on the ground nearby: plantings, weed control, creek repair, nest boxes. This knowledge is rarely in any database, and it is often the most useful thing you can get.
Held by volunteers and local groups
COMMUNITYNATIONAL
Citizen science records
Photographs and identifications that people uploaded to iNaturalist, gathered up with museum and herbarium collections in the Atlas of Living Australia. Anyone with a phone can add to this one.
Held by the people who look, gathered nationally
02 / THE RISK
Why that puts biodiversity at risk.
Nobody sees the whole picture
Each system answers its own question. Where is the boundary. What category is the vegetation. Is the species listed. None of them answers the question a household actually has, which is what is here and what should I do.
The decisions are small and local
A tree. A fence. A weed. A dog left out at night. These are the choices that decide whether habitat stays habitat, and they get made in an afternoon. The rules exist, but they reach the household late, or never.
The gaps become losses
Habitat rarely goes all at once. It goes in slivers, one lot at a time, until the patch left is too small to hold anything. And the records that would have shown what was there were sitting in a database nobody opened.
03 / THE SPARK
How this
project started.
Peachester State School's BioGlow team identified this through an interview with Queensland Ecologists as part of their FLL BioGlow innovation project. The checker is their answer: one address, every source, plain words.
01ASK
→02LISTEN
→03BUILD
→04SHARE
04 / THE ANSWER
What the checker
does about it.
- Pulls every source for the lot in one go, so you are not chasing eleven websites.
- Says what each one means in plain words, instead of agency language.
- Links every claim back to the source page, so you can check it yourself.
- Shows what to do next, and who to ask.
- Invites you to add your own sightings, so the picture keeps getting better.
Check a property ↗
Start with an address. Queensland-wide.