"We used the most conservative figures" for land clearing, Chris Dickman, a professor of ecology at the University of Sydney, said. The reluctance of the government to release data on what has happened to vegetation destruction rates in recent years was "really quite embarrassing", he said, adding that NSW was heading back to the 40,000-hectare annual clearing rates that existing in the early 2000s before tighter controls began. Victim of habitat loss: A koala killed on the roadside in Campbelltown. Credit:Courtesy of Help Save the Wildlife/WWF-Australia "NSW now has the weakest woodland and forest protections," Darren Grover, WWF-Australia’s head of living ecosystems, said. "It is the worst place to live in Australia if you are a wild animal that needs trees to survive." Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton discussed the report with WWF staff on Wednesday. "The minister has heard the Fund’s concerns and will respond to the report in due course after its findings have been considered," a spokesman said.

The accumulated destruction of habitat on private land is pushing more species towards threatened or endangered status, such as the greater glider or even koalas. Loading "We're seeing fewer and fewer species that we once thought were common," Professor Dickman said. Animals die because even if they can escape the bulldozers to adjoining habitat, those areas are hardly vacant. "We really have to start taking our biodiversity seriously," Professor Dickman said. "It's our life-support system as well as all the things that interact in it - we're all part of the living world."

Cate Faehrmann, the Greens environment spokeswoman, said the scale of the native animal losses should come as a shock even if the outcome of weakening protections was predictable. Loading "This important report should be a wake-up call for Premier [Gladys] Berejiklian that her government’s anti-environment agenda has gone too far and she should reintroduce protections for native wildlife and vegetation," she said. Illegally cleared land up for sale Separately, the Office of Environment and Heritage said it was monitoring the sale of the Colorado property in northern NSW where Glen Turner, an OEH inspector, was murdered in 2014.