Queensland government efforts to re-introduce land-clearing curbs failed in mid-2016. Credit:The Wilderness Society Despite Queensland traditionally accounting for the bulk of land-clearing in Australia, the federal government's greenhouse gas inventory for the 2015-16 year showed emissions from land use changes only amounted to 1.7 million tonnes. That figure was down 13 per cent from a year earlier. Even taking into account the possibility some areas added tree cover, the discrepancy between state and federal numbers should intensify concerns about the reliability of the national data, Glenn Walker, a climate change campaigner with The Wilderness Society, said. "It's just inexplicable that while Queensland deforestation and land clearing is spiking dramatically, the federal government is somehow recording a big drop in deforestation emissions," Mr Walker said. Mr Walker said international observers questioned Australia over its land-clearing figures at climate talks in 2016, and the latest Queensland data were likely to prompt more queries.

Land-clearing in Queensland continues to soar, reaching almost 400,000 hectares in 2015-16. Credit:The Wilderness Society "For our Kyoto targets Australia has had to do very little in reducing emissions in our energy sector, transport and elsewhere, simply because we've been able to bring down land-clearing rates," he said. Fairfax Media sought a response from Josh Frydenberg, the federal environment minister.



A spokesman for the Environment Department stood by the federal figures, saying it used "Landsat satellite data to identify land clearing across Australia using a consistent methodology developed in collaboration with the CSIRO Data61" and used Geoscience Australia's "big data" Data Cube. Out on a limb: Koala in the Moree region of NSW where land clearing is having a devastating impact on wildlife. Credit:Nick Moir It also uses additional datasets such as the Queensland and NSW governments' land-clearing estimates once they are published, he said, adding it will use the latest SLATS (2015-16) data to "inform the 2016 National Inventory".

"Each year, we update land clearing estimates based on latest satellite data," he said. "Where applicable, we also revise estimates to reflect improvements in remote sensing and estimation methods." Land-clearing north of Moree in NSW filmed from above in August. Credit:Nick Moir ERF undone The acceleration in deforestation also reverses much of the federal government's $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).

About $1.4 billion of that money was spent on replanting trees or avoided deforestation. Of that total, almost half went on 78 Queensland projects, The Wilderness Society said. NSW, which has lately loosened its native vegetation clearing laws, received 44 per cent of that $1.4 billion for 136 vegetation-related projects. The lack of federal control over land clearing in those two states "makes a mockery" of the ERF, Janet Rice, the federal Greens environment spokeswoman, said. "The idea that you can prevent climate change by planting trees, while simultaneously stripping the land bare of its carbon stocks and pulling out all the stops to burn more coal, is frankly ludicrous," Senator Rice said. Queensland's Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the rate of tree clearing was "unsustainable" and Labor would again take proposals for tougher tree-clearing legislation to the looming state election.

The laws would include changes to the existing "self-assessment" regime used by landowners to decide whether to clear land, Ms Trad confirmed. The Palaszczuk government tried to pass tighter tree-clearing legislation through state Parliament last year but did not win the support of the crossbench, who voted down the new laws with the Opposition. "Alarmingly what this shows is that from the last full year that Labor was in office, 2011-12, tree clearing in Queensland has quadrupled," Ms Trad said. Queensland remains Australia's worst greenhouse gas emitter in the country, according to the latest National Greenhouse Accounts. "This makes it even harder to meet our emission commitments in the Paris (climate change) Agreements," Dr Miles said.

"It's time the federal government changed the way it calculates carbon emissions from tree clearing," he said. "They should adopt consistent reporting of land and tree clearing across states and the Commonwealth, in line with best practice in this area – which has traditionally been the Queensland SLATS Scheme verified by field reporting." Loading Dr Miles also said scientific research clearly showed the impact on Queensland's wildlife and on sediment flow down rivers which "choked the Reef." Apart from the emissions, land clearing is putting at risk Australia's biodiversity with 739 plant and 210 animal species threatened from the practice in Queensland alone, a report found last year.