Exclusive: Figures released after eight-month FOI battle by the Guardian shows clearing spiked sharply in 2015-16

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Only two prosecutions for illegal land-clearing were launched in New South Wales in 2015-16, down from 10 the previous year, the long-awaited report card on the state of land-clearing shows.

However, the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) appears to have had more success with cases already under way the year before, with four convictions secured, up from just one in 2014-15.

A combined native vegetation report for 2014-2016 was released by the OEH late Friday, after an eight-month battle by Guardian Australia using freedom of information laws to secure its release. It was almost two years overdue.

It shows a sharp spike in native vegetation cleared legally in NSW during 2015-16, with 7,390 hectares cleared, double the 10-year average and eight times the area cleared in 2013-14.

There were also big losses in woody vegetation in 2014-15, the latest data for this part of the report. This was mainly due to major bushfires in 2014 but there was also a 23% rise in loss of bushland due to major infrastructure projects, such as roads, pipelines, electricity infrastructure and mines. There was also a modest increase in clearing bushland on agricultural land.

The most recent report, for 2016-17, has still not been released.

Clearing of native vegetation in NSW jumps 800% in three years Read more

Environmental groups and the OEH itself fear clearing will increase sharply in coming years, under the new Biodiversity Conservation Act, which came into force in August 2017. It allows landholders to self-assess whether they need to seek a permit. In many cases they do not require one.

Land clearing has a direct relationship to the severity of droughts and climate change, according to work by the University of Queensland’s climate change centre of excellence in 2009. The rate of clearing, particularly in Queensland, threatens to wipe out emissisons reductions made through the government’s Direct Action fund.

The Greens NSW environment spokesperson, Mehreen Faruqi, said the state government had made changes to native vegetation laws that they knew would accelerate land-clearing.

“Even worse, they did so while withholding from the public how much native vegetation is left in NSW. There is absolutely no transparency in environmental decision making,” she said.

The enforcement of land-clearing laws has been highly contentious in NSW. In 2014, a farmer in Coppa Creek, Ian Turnbull, used a hunting rifle to shoot dead native vegetation officer Glen Turner who was on public land with a colleague.



Turner had been investigating land-clearing activities on the Turnbull farm. Turnbull, 79, was sentenced to 35 years jail and died soon after.

The report card on compliance reveals significant fluctuations since 2009 in the compliance activity of OEH and will raise concerns about how diligently the Berejiklian government is pursuing compliance with land-clearing laws.



For instance, in 2010-11 and 2011-12, there were more than 235 warning letters issued each year. In 2015-16 the figure had fallen to 164. Remediation directions fell from 39 in 2009-10 to just six in 2015-16.



But the report shows that the public remain concerned about illegal land-clearing. There were 466 reports to the OEH hotline during 2015-16 to report suspected illegal land-clearing.

Additional figures obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws show that the number of monthly calls to the OEH hotline has jumped by about 25% since the new Biodiversity Conservation Act was introduced in August 2017 – a possible pointer to increased land-clearing.

The Nature Conservation Council’s campaigns manager, Daisy Barham, said the latest figures for NSW were “shocking”. While NSW’s rate of clearing is not as high as Queensland, she said the state had far less to lose.

“Only 9% of NSW is in a healthy and intact condition and in some areas like the north-west around Moree that figure is even less because pressures from agriculture have been the greatest,” she said.

While NSW’s losses are not on the same scale as Queensland, which lost 395,000 hectares to land-clearing in 2015-16, environmental groups have warned that the latest data on land-clearing in NSW almost certainly understates the amount of vegetation loss occurring.

The reports use higher resolution Spot-5 satellite imagery which the department says is generally more accurate than those from Landsat.

But WWF’s land-clearing expert, Martin Taylor, said the higher resolution meant “you literally can’t see the wood for the trees” and that Spot-5 higher resolution pictures did not pick up on thinning of forests.