Great Barrier Reef catchment trees still falling despite crackdown
Tree clearing in the Great Barrier Reef catchment has peek bodies concerned, five years on from a Palaszczuk government’s crack down on tree clearing.
Rapid tree-clearing rates have been recorded in the Great Barrier Reef catchment five years after the Palaszczuk government targeted the region with controversial vegetation management laws.
Figures from the Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) show clearing rates in the catchment area, which comprises 25 per cent of Queensland’s land, from Cape York to Burnett Mary catchments, recorded 47 per cent of all tree clearing across the state in 2021.
The government introduced strict laws in 2018 to reduce the rates of tree clearing through the reef’s catchment areas. But SLATS reports from 2015-2021 have found woody vegetation is disappearing across the reef catchments, ranging from 38 per cent to 47 per cent of the state’s total removal.
A SLATS report found between 2016 and 2018 more than 700,000ha had been cleared.
Over 40 per cent of the state’s total woody vegetation cleared was recorded in the reef’s catchment, equating to 314000ha of forest and bushland bulldozed across the endangered ecosystem during the two-year period.
Conservation Council campaigner Natalie Frost said federal and state government had failed in the area.
“The federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) is also failing nature as thousands of hectares are cleared each year in Queensland without being referred for assessment under the EPBC Act,” she said.
“We did welcome a reduction in the clearing figures, but the figures do not go far enough if the government wants to uphold no new extinctions.
“In the last two years, there has been an increase of full removal of woody vegetation in the GBR catchment, but since 2018, there have been minor reductions.”
The Palaszczuk government used the findings to support its case to toughen controls on landholders in 2018.
SLATS reports found that clearing activity in the Barrier Reef catchment in 2018-2019 accounted for 32 per cent of the state’s total loss, with more than 680,000ha of forest cleared across Queensland, doubling the previous year’s total, despite the changes to legislation.
Resources Minister Scott Stewart said due to a change in methodology, which provided more precise data and a more accurate and complete picture of vegetation management across the state, the reports from 2020-2021 to 2017-2018 were not comparable.
“At the same time, they continue to allow landholders to manage and grow the farm operations that are fundamental to good jobs in our regions,” Mr Stewart said.
“The latest SLATS report shows a 70 per cent reduction in regulated vegetation clearing over three years.”
Conservationists are calling on the state government to strengthen vegetation laws to protect the nation’s most acclaimed natural asset.
Wilderness Society Queensland campaigns manager Hannah Schuch said between 2015 and 2020 at least 87 per cent of land clearing in Queensland was linked to beef in the Barrier Reef catchment area.
“There are codes within the Vegetation Management Act that are too weak and not properly enforced,” she said.
“In the catchment area, it’s still far too high; the hectares have decreased, but the percentage of land cleared for beef is largely the same and increasing.”
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