Record fine for farmer who illegally bulldozed woodland

A wealthy farmer who once headed up GrainCorp has been fined more than $1 million in the state’s largest-ever fine for an individual convicted of land clearing, and his company has been fined another $1.1 million.

Ronald Lewis Greentree and Auen Grain, a company owned and controlled by Greentree, were found guilty of illegally bulldozing, burning and ploughing vegetation including native woodland on his property north-west of Narrabri in NSW.

Ron Greentree, a farmer and former chairman of GrainCorp, pictured in 2013.Credit: Nic Walker

The NSW Land and Environment Court on Friday fined Greentree $1,015,200 and Auen Grain a further $1,072,800 for six offences under the Native Vegetation Act 2003 and two under the Local Land Services Act 2013.

The land clearing in 2016-19 occurred at Boolcarrol, a 34,000-hectare property with grazing and cropping north-west of Narrabri. The cleared land was 1262 hectares, about 10 per cent of the property at the time.

Greentree has since sold most of the land, but still retains 6.48 hectares.

Greentree and Auen Grain pleaded not guilty, but were found guilty in a December 2022 decision. The court deferred its sentencing decision for nearly two years.

In a decision published on Friday, Justice John Robson found beyond reasonable doubt that the clearing had damaged coolabah-black box woodlands and likely that it had harmed eight threatened fauna species.

These included the pale-headed snake, south-eastern glossy black-cockatoo, brown treecreeper, painted honeyeater, grey-crowned babbler, hooded robin, diamond firetail and yellow-bellied sheath-tailed bat.

Justice Robson also found that the harm that could be caused by the clearing was “manifest and reasonably foreseeable”, and that there was no evidence the defendants tried to avoid it.

He found the land-clearing was committed intentionally to remove vegetation to convert land from grazing livestock to cropping – “a plan that was plainly obvious at the time Boolcarrol was purchased” – and found beyond reasonable doubt that this was done for financial gain.

Justice Robson found six offences were in the serious range and two were in the mid to serious range.

The prosecutor argued that neither Greentree nor Auen Grain were entitled to a discounted penalty for not having prior offences, since they were found to have contravened the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in 2004 by clearing internationally protected wetlands on a property in north-west NSW to plant wheat.

The Ramsar Gwydir Wetlands are an 823-hectare area west of Moree, protected by international treaty as a waterfowl habitat, the court found in 2004, and the area cleared by Greentree and Auen was about 100 hectares on the 2000-hectare Windella property.

The court in 2004 found Greentree and the company “effectively cleared the whole … site”, leading to significant impact on the ecology of the wetlands. Greentree was fined $150,000 and his company $300,000 for contravening federal environmental laws by land clearing in 2002 and 2003, and the court also ordered restoration work.

In the recent judgment, Justice Robson found the defendants were entitled to some mitigation because they had not previously breached the state legislation that the new offences came under, and Greentree for being of previous good character.

Half the value of the fines will go to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. The court also awarded costs to the department as the prosecutor.

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