Satellite analysis shows clearing of more than 100 hectares at Cape York’s Olive Vale station in year after minister’s intervention

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Land is being cleared in north Queensland without federal government approval despite concerns about threatened species in the area, in what conservation groups have claimed is an unfolding environmental crisis.

Four peak environmental bodies on Tuesday released satellite analysis showing more than 100 hectares at Olive Vale station in Cape York were cleared without approval in the year following the intervention of the federal environment minister in 2015.

They said it was “one case in a larger environmental crisis unfolding in Queensland” where bushland the size of the Melbourne cricket ground was “destroyed every three minutes” under clearing protections weakened by the former Liberal National party government, and which its Labor successor tried and failed to restore.

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The owner of Olive Vale has confirmed the clearing but told ABC that he was under no legal obligation to seek federal approval under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

The state Labor government is examining whether clearing on the property, which contains habitat for endangered species such as the buff-breasted button-quail and is in the Great Barrier Reef catchment, breaches any state laws.

The cattle station gained approval to clear 31,000 hectares for crops in the final days of the LNP government in 2015. It cleared 1,700 hectares before the then environment minister, Greg Hunt, halted the project months later.

The Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society, WWF and the Queensland Conservation Council said Hunt had given “written assurances that a referral under the EPBC Act would be made ‘within months’”.

Hunt’s department in November 2015 said there was “no significant impact on threatened species and their habitats” but that “no further works are planned on the property unless and until all approvals are granted”.

No referral has since been made.

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Gemma Plesman of the Wilderness Society said the lack of regulatory action “highlights the need for much stronger environment laws at both state and federal levels”.

“Allowing ongoing clearing at Olive Vale without consequence is unacceptable and is just one case in a much larger crisis unfolding right across Queensland, where one million hectares have been cleared in Queensland alone in the past four years with almost no federal oversight,” she said.

WWF conservation scientist Martin Taylor said there seemed to be “no even-handedness in how the EPBC Act is enforced” with smaller projects such as the Mt Emerald windfarm referred under the act for its clearance of 38 hectares.

“Why in this and many other tree-clearing cases do we see no effort to follow due process, and little effort by the federal government to do something about it?”

Olive Vale owner Paul Ryan told the ABC that he had done “nothing wrong” and that the clearing was “in line with our development approval”. He said that “a lot of it was just clearing up the edges of areas that we’ve already cleared.

“It was just individual trees – we haven’t pulled a chain with a bulldozer since 2015.”



Ryan said he had discussed the matter with authorities “but there was no formal documentation stating that a referral was required”.

A spokeswoman for the environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the government was “aware of an allegation that land clearing has re-commenced at Olive Vale station”. “The federal department of environment and energy is currently making urgent enquiries into this allegation,” she said.

The Guardian reported last year that a former LNP official and land-clearing consultant had urged north Queensland landholders to “hang up” on federal environment officials and refuse entry unless they had search warrants.

The consultant, Peter Spies, said holders of state clearing permits were “under no compulsion to refer your permit [to the commonwealth] and that, soon as you do refer, it opens up comment from third parties”.

The Queensland deputy premier, Jackie Trad, last week told the Guardian that Labor’s promise to restore clearing protections was the best immediate way of cutting both the state’s carbon emissions and pollution of the Great Barrier Reef, despite there being “people who don’t want to see their property rights reduced”.