It is essential that planning instruments and management agencies take a broad, landscape view of Springbrook. What does a new clearing and development do to the vision of restored catchments? What does continuing widening of road verges do to the vision of a restored closed canopy that protects the microclimate within the rainforest and hence the ancient species that have been around for tens of millions of years? What needs to be done to present Springbrook as a World Heritage site? When the international visitor anticipating a World Heritage area arrives on the Plateau, what do they see? Cleared paddocks and cattle. Gold Coast City Council is responsible for managing roadside vegetation on Repeater Station Road which takes visitors to one of the most popular attractions, Best of All Lookout. The road passes through rainforest which, in some stretches, closes over the road making a very attractive scenic drive. In other stretches, the canopy is regularly lopped to protect overhead power lines. A few years ago, the road verge was covered by the attractive native ground cover, Large Pennywort (Hydrocotyle pedicellosa). As a result of Council’s management practices, pennywort has largely been replaced by weeds. Another major landscape issue is fragmentation of rainforest resulting from residential development and maintenance of canopy gaps for power lines.
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