title: Macedon Ranges Vegetation Protection Overlay Schedules VPO1-VPO9 council: macedon-ranges state: vic category: constraint classification: MAJOR status: draft last_compiled: 2026-05-31 source_docs:
- 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf
- 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf
Macedon Ranges Vegetation Protection Overlay Schedules VPO1-VPO9
The Macedon Ranges Vegetation Protection Overlay system is a nine-schedule local planning control framework that uses vegetation-specific, roadside, habitat-corridor, and landscape-scale overlays to add local permit triggers and policy support beyond the statewide native vegetation provisions. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1490) The December 2025 source material does not contain the full statutory schedule text for VPO1-VPO9; it contains Council’s draft Biodiversity Strategy explanation of what each overlay is intended to protect, how the overlays relate to Clause 52.17, and where the strategy proposes future planning-control work. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.158)
Background
Council’s first Biodiversity Strategy was adopted in December 2018 and established a shared vision for flourishing and connected native plants, animals, natural places, and waterways across the Macedon Ranges. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.158) The 2025-2030 draft Biodiversity Strategy is a refresh of that 2018 strategy and was prepared to align Council’s biodiversity program with new scientific knowledge, legislative obligations, emerging issues, and community consultation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1473) Council officers recommended on 17 December 2025 that Council release the updated draft Biodiversity Strategy for six weeks of community consultation before future adoption. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.158)
The planning-control context is that Clause 52.17 of Victorian planning schemes already requires a permit to remove, destroy, or lop native vegetation unless an exemption applies, and the clause applies a three-step biodiversity approach of avoiding removal, minimising unavoidable impacts, and providing offsets where removal is permitted. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1487) The draft strategy explains that a Vegetation Protection Overlay can be useful where Council wants to override Clause 52.17 exemptions or provide additional policy support to achieve a conservation outcome. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1490)
Analysis
How the VPO System Works
The VPO schedules operate as a local overlay layer rather than a land-use control. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1488) The draft strategy states that planning zones generally manage land use and development, while overlays manage development only and do not control use, which means overlays alone are not necessarily effective at mitigating biodiversity threats that arise from ongoing land use. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1488) In simple terms, the VPO is like a gate on vegetation removal, not a full rulebook for how land is farmed, lived on, or managed every day. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1488)
This matters because many Macedon Ranges biodiversity pressures occur on private and rural land where farming, rural living, housing, fire management, weeds, pest animals, and informal land-management practices interact. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1495, 1514, 1562-1566) The draft strategy therefore treats VPO controls as one part of a wider system that also includes land management plans, compliance resourcing, roadside management, conservation reserves, covenants, biolink grants, monitoring, and community education. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1531-1532)
Schedule-by-Schedule Function
VPO1 protects remnant Black Gums near Woodend township, and the species is listed as vulnerable under both the EPBC Act and the FFG Act. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1491) The permit trigger described in the draft strategy is focused on removal of remnant Black Gums, so the schedule is species-specific rather than landscape-wide. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491)
VPO2 protects significant remnant roadside vegetation throughout the municipality where roadsides function as biodiversity links, remnant corridors, or locations for rare or threatened species or communities. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) The draft strategy states that VPO2 requires a permit to remove, destroy, or lop any vegetation, but includes exclusions for public-authority works connected with vegetation management, fire management, or environmental improvements. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) This schedule is important because Council manages 1,700 kilometres of roadside vegetation for biodiversity, habitat, fire risk, vehicle access, and public safety. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1511)
VPO3 applies to Woodend Racecourse, which the draft strategy describes as one of Victoria’s most significant remnant grassland areas. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) VPO3 protects Narrow Leaf New Holland Daisy, Woolly Buttons, and other locally significant grassland species, and requires a permit to remove any vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) The draft strategy notes a spatial limitation: remnant plains grassland patches also occur in Woodend North, Lancefield, Gisborne, and Riddells Creek, but VPO3 is limited to Woodend Racecourse, including the Woodend Grassland Reserve section. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491)
VPO4 applies to Carlsruhe Cemetery and protects regionally significant remnant grasslands and EVC 894 Scoria Cone Woodland within the cemetery reserve. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) The draft strategy states that VPO4 requires a permit to remove any vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491)
VPO5 protects remnant Narrow-leaved Peppermint and its habitat in a one-hectare public-land area north of Five Mile Creek managed by Woodend Golf Club. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) The draft strategy states that VPO5 requires a permit to remove any vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491)
VPO6 protects significant remnant vegetation and habitat associated with identified wildlife corridors. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) The draft strategy states that VPO6 overlaps in places with VPO2 and that areas mapped under VPO6 are significant because they function as biodiversity links and corridors, consolidate remnant corridors, or contain rare or threatened species or communities. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491) VPO6 requires a permit to remove any vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1491)
VPO7 protects remnant Yarra Gums and their habitat near Woodend township, and Yarra Gum is listed as critically endangered under the FFG Act. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1491-1492) The draft strategy describes the VPO7 trigger as applying to removal, lopping, or destruction of remnant Yarra Gums. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1492)
VPO8 is the Cobaw Biolink control and is intended to protect and enhance the corridor between significant vegetation in the Macedon and Cobaw Ranges. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1492) The draft strategy states that VPO8 protects and enhances remnant native vegetation for its biodiversity and habitat role and requires a permit to remove any native vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1492)
VPO9 is the Living Forest control and is intended to protect and enhance remnant native vegetation for biodiversity, natural resource management, landscape, and character. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1492) VPO9 requires a permit to remove any native vegetation, but the draft strategy notes an exemption for personal firewood collection and clarifies that the exemption was intended to apply to fallen timber rather than lopping or removal of standing trees. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1492)
Spatial Logic and Constraint Strength
The nine schedules are not uniform controls. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492) VPO1, VPO5, and VPO7 are species-specific controls; VPO3 and VPO4 are site-specific grassland controls; VPO2 and VPO6 are corridor and roadside controls; and VPO8 and VPO9 are broader landscape-scale controls. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492)
The strongest practical constraint is likely to arise where a schedule requires a permit for any vegetation rather than only a named species or native vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1491-1492) On the source description, VPO2, VPO3, VPO4, VPO5, and VPO6 are broader at the permit-trigger level because they refer to any vegetation, while VPO1 and VPO7 are narrower because they focus on named gum species, and VPO8 and VPO9 focus on native vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1491-1492) The actual legal breadth still depends on the full schedule wording, which is not included in the supplied source extracts. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492)
The schedules also align with different ecological problems. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492) The Black Gum and Yarra Gum schedules respond to threatened species risk around Woodend. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492) The roadside and wildlife-corridor schedules respond to fragmentation and the need for linear habitat connections across modified landscapes. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1491, 1511) The Cobaw Biolink and Living Forest schedules respond to landscape-scale connectivity, especially where private land helps connect larger habitat blocks. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1509, 1562-1566)
Relationship to Biodiversity Strategy Actions
The draft Biodiversity Strategy does not propose a direct rewrite of VPO1-VPO9 in the supplied text. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1531-1532) Instead, the action plan proposes three planning-control actions: consider rezoning conservation reserves to Public Conservation and Resource Zone where applicable, review land management plan guidelines and templates every three to five years, and review local planning policy content to include the strategy’s policy directions. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1531)
The most immediate action is Action 1.02 because it is marked Very High priority and uses internal resources. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1531) The effect is procedural rather than cartographic: it would not necessarily change VPO mapping, but it could change the biodiversity expectations attached to planning permits that require land management plans. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1531) Action 1.03 is weaker in timing because it is listed as arising as opportunity arises, but it is the action most directly linked to future planning-scheme policy translation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1531)
Development, Growth, and Compliance Pressure
Community engagement identified urban development as a major biodiversity concern and raised specific issues about biodiversity corridors, habitat trees, roadsides, waterways, threatened EVCs, and hard-surface coverage in new development. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.169) Council’s response states that Macedon Ranges Shire’s population is forecast to increase by 25 per cent between 2021 and 2036, with most growth expected in Gisborne, Kyneton, Romsey, and Riddells Creek. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.169) Council’s response also states that about 12 per cent of housing built between then and 2036 is expected to be medium-density housing, which is about 3 percentage points above current trends. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.169)
The under-the-hood mechanism is that growth pressure increases the number of decisions where vegetation retention must be balanced against dwellings, roads, defendable space, drainage, open space, and service infrastructure. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.169) VPO schedules influence those decisions by adding a permit trigger and decision framework for vegetation removal, but they do not by themselves guarantee long-term land stewardship after development or agricultural use continues. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1488)
Compliance is a separate weak point in the system. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1532) The draft action plan proposes increasing proactive compliance resources for environmental permit conditions, formalising a procedure to capture and report illegal native vegetation removal, continuing awareness work on legal clearing requirements, advocating for stronger state penalties, and investigating a restoration fund for remediation after illegal vegetation removal. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1532) This indicates that the planning-control system depends not only on mapped overlays but also on enforcement capacity, condition monitoring, and restoration pathways after unlawful clearing. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1532)
Current Status
As at the 17 December 2025 agenda, the relevant Council decision was whether to endorse release of the updated draft Biodiversity Strategy for six weeks of community consultation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.158) The officer report stated that a second and final round of engagement would be used to finalise the refreshed Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with adoption proposed at a future Council meeting in early 2026. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.161) The supplied source set does not confirm whether Council later adopted the strategy or initiated any planning-scheme amendment to update VPO schedules, local policy, or VPO mapping. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, pp.158-161)
Dependencies
- Blocks: The VPO schedules can block or condition vegetation removal where a permit is triggered, but the supplied extracts do not include the complete statutory decision guidelines or exemption wording for each schedule. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492)
- Blocked by: Effective implementation is constrained by compliance resourcing, monitoring systems, land management plan quality, and the limits of overlays that do not control land use. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1488, 1531-1532)
- Informed by: The 2025-2030 draft Biodiversity Strategy, the 2018 Biodiversity Strategy review, community engagement from August to September 2025, roadside conservation work, and landscape connectivity planning inform the VPO policy context. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, pp.158-160; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1509, 1511)
- Implements: The VPO framework supports Objective 1 of the draft Biodiversity Strategy, which is to protect existing biodiversity and native vegetation. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1492, 1531)
- Conflicts with: The source material identifies tension between biodiversity protection and development pressure, including community concern about housing targets, vegetation loss, habitat trees, roadsides, waterways, and biodiversity corridors in new development. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, p.169)
Cross-Jurisdictional Links
The VPO system interacts with multiple state and regional bodies because biodiversity, roadsides, public land, waterways, and threatened species are not confined to Council-owned land. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1556-1559) The draft strategy identifies DEECA, Parks Victoria, VicTrack, VicRoads, the CFA, North Central CMA, Port Phillip and Westernport CMA, Goulburn Broken CMA, Melbourne Water, Coliban Water, and Greater Western Water as relevant stakeholders or land managers. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1556-1558) This means VPO outcomes depend on cross-tenure coordination, especially along roadsides, waterways, biolinks, and public land interfaces. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1511, 1556-1558)
Gaps in This Analysis
The supplied source set does not include the full Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme ordinance for Clause 42.02 schedules VPO1-VPO9, so this page cannot verify the exact statutory wording, permit exemptions, application requirements, or decision guidelines for each schedule. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492) The supplied source set includes references to VPO mapping figures A1-A9, but the extracted text does not provide machine-readable mapped areas, parcel counts, hectare coverage, or affected-property data. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1547-1555) The supplied source set does not confirm whether the December 2025 draft Biodiversity Strategy was adopted in early 2026 or whether any subsequent planning-scheme amendment was started. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda.pdf, pp.158-161)
The key analytical gap is therefore not whether the VPO schedules exist, but how strongly each schedule operates in statutory practice. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492) A complete version of this page would require the current Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme schedules to Clause 42.02, current overlay maps, any amendment documentation affecting VPO schedules, and permit/compliance data showing how often each VPO schedule is triggered and with what outcomes. (Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, pp.1490-1492; Source: 17-december-2025-scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-attachments.pdf, p.1532)