Alaine Anderson feeds a rescued koala near Croppa Creek - a region of northern NSW that has seen extensive land clearing, especially of koala habitat. Credit:Nick Moir The lack of "concurrence" was revealed in documents obtained under freedom of information that indicate Ms Upton approved the codes on August 25 this year, a day after Mr Blair made them, the council claims. The rushed actions "of two of the Coalition government's ministers have put wildlife at risk and undermined the principles of good government in NSW", Kate Smolski, the council's chief executive, said. Ms Upton's office declined to comment. A spokeswoman the Minister for Primary Industries, Niall Blair, said it was inappropriate to comment directly on a matter before the court. "The code forms an integral part of the government's biodiversity reforms, which have been subject to extensive consultation, and balances the rights of landholders with environmental concerns," the spokeswoman said.

'Return to the drawing board' Land-clearing rates in NSW are understood to have begun accelerating even before the legal changes were passed in August. Critics say they gave farmers and other landholders more rights to self-assess the quality of the native vegetation on their land rather than seek external approval. David Morris, chief executive of the Environmental Defenders Office NSW, said the aim of the action was to have the Berejiklian government "return to the drawing board", and reconsider its entire native vegetation package. "The code will no longer have force [if the matter succeeds], and so land-clearing undertaken in purported compliance with that code will also be rendered unlawful," Mr Morris said. "We say landholders should exercise extreme caution whilst the legal validity of the code is under question," he said, adding the case could last as long as six months unless the court takes the "unlikely" step of throwing it out.

Penny Sharpe, Labor's environment spokeswoman, said Ms Upton had failed to do her job as environment minister: "Through her failure to push back on the National Party she has been complicit in the gutting of land-clearing laws." "Submissions, pleas, protests, scientific evidence and good sense have fallen on deaf ears of the Berejiklian government," Ms Sharpe said. "Before [the next state elections in] 2019, legal action is the only option left." 'Ecocidal government' Mehreen Faruqi, the Greens environment spokeswoman, said the new codes had "no social license and soon we will find out whether they have any legal basis either". "This ecocidal government completely rejected community concerns and even dismissed warnings from a key member of their own advisory panel," Dr Faruqi said, referring to conservation biologist Hugh Possingham's decision to quit the panel overseeing the land-clearing laws a year ago.

"We need to put an end to these wildlife and tree killing laws and we need to do it as soon as possible before it is too late," she said. "As it stands, these laws are just a green light to broadscale clearing." Loading Mr Morris from the EDO said the government had placed "a heavy reliance" on maps that were not ready for much of the state, leaving farmers to self-assess - potentially at their legal peril should they destroy endangered or threatened species. "It's really an unfair burden on farmers to assess the quality of the vegetation on their land," he said.