An investment company bought the 181ha former Air Services Australia site at Cranebrook in 2004, intending to subdivide and develop it for 1800 new residents.
Since then, a number of rare and threatened plants and animals have been found on the land.
The state environment department specifically recommended in 2006 that the entire site be protected.A December study of the land identified nine threatened species and three endangered ecological communities across the rugged bushland, including 30 endangered flowering nodding geebung shrubs, of which just a few thousand remain in the wild _ and only in Western Sydney.
