Somewhere today in Queensland, bulldozers are tearing down native bushland that was once protected.

After the weakening of tree clearing controls by the previous state government, more than 200,000 hectares of threatened species habitat was destroyed in the two years from July 2012 to July 2014.

That’s the equivalent of nearly 5m house blocks.

A further 800,000 hectares of threatened species habitat has been de-protected.

We dread seeing more up-to-date statistics, because we expect them to be much worse, since the laws remain weakened at the time of writing.

Not surprisingly, there has been an upsurge in sick and injured native animals. Wildlife rescues by the RSPCA jumped from about 8,000 in 2011 to 22,000 in the past year.

When WWF checked with other wildlife rescuers in Queensland they too reported recent increases in native animal rescues, which most put down to more tree clearing and habitat loss.

In areas where there are no wildlife rescuers, we can only guess at how many thousands more of our precious threatened species have perished.

Most Australians care about our native plants and animals so the escalating bushland destruction in Queensland is a sad tale for Australia. It’s no longer just Queensland either – New South Wales is now considering similar laws that will weaken tree clearing controls.

When bushland is bulldozed, many animals are killed initially. Those that survive are on borrowed time. The refugees scramble to find new homes and on the way get hit by cars or mauled by dogs or cats.

Even if they are lucky enough to reach new habitat, they soon come into conflict with the animals already there. The stress gets to them and they succumb.

The impacts don’t stop at habitat destruction.

Carbon pollution released by tree clearing in Queensland in 2013-14 was the equivalent of putting an extra 8m cars on the road for a year.

The extra pollution undid the work of carbon abatement and tree planting, from the Emissions Reduction Fund, worth hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

It’s pointless to spend public funds to combat global warming and then allow the gains to be nullified by lax tree clearing controls.

Land clearing at Augathella in western Queensland Photograph: Barry Traill/WWF

The record temperatures and bleached and dying corals we are seeing right now on the Great Barrier Reef are a stark warning of the spiralling crisis of carbon pollution.

Bulldozing bushland also hurts the reef in another way by generating sediment pollution that can smother and kill corals and sea grass. If land is converted to crops, you also get ongoing agrichemical pollution.

Following the weakening of controls in Queensland there was a 229% increase in tree clearing in reef catchments according to the state’s Auditor General.

As with carbon pollution, the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars being spent to reduce water pollution in the reef is undermined by lax laws that allow clearing to escalate, eroding soils and making sediment pollution worse.

It makes no sense at all.

People are often shocked when I tell them that in the last 200 years more mammals have become extinct in Australia than anywhere else in the world. But, when you see the bigger picture of tree clearing and habitat destruction it is not surprising.

Last year WWF-International’s Living Forests Report for the first time named eastern Australia as a “global deforestation front”, one of 11 regions within which more than 80% of global forest destruction is projected to occur between 2010 and 2030.

Australia’s problem areas are Queensland and New South Wales, due to weakening of tree clearing measures in the first and proposed weakening of measures in the second.

Queensland has woken up. The present government vowed to restore effective land clearing controls as an election promise and was voted into power in January 2015. A bill restoring effective protection for bushland is finally before parliament a year later, but its future is not assured. The government does not have an outright majority and depends on independent MPs to pass bills. Meanwhile, vested interests are campaigning relentlessly against the bill.

After seeing the sad history of the rollback of tree clearing measures in Queensland, WWF-Australia and other environment groups have been doubly distressed to see the same process unfolding in New South Wales, almost step for step following the destructive example of the former Queensland government.

Environment groups walked out of talks with the NSW government recently because we could see that our warnings not to repeat Queensland’s mistakes were being ignored.

Global warming, polluted water, a dying reef, wildlife driven to extinction, degraded land. Is this really the future we want for our country?