New Land Clearing Laws Have No Scientific Credibility: Renowned Professor Resigns

The dramatic eleventh-hour resignation by Professor Hugh Possingham[1], Australia’s most recognised scientist, has stripped away any pretence of scientific credibility and exposed Mike Baird’s land clearing legislation for what it is: a cash grab by big business and developers.

The primary objections of Professor Possingham are that the government is proposing self-assessable codes that will result in broad-scale land clearing, thus degrading soil, water and biodiversity, and that the ‘no net loss’ standard against which clearing should be measured has not made the draft legislation. 

Why Are National Parks Important

National Party emerges as a key threatening process to Mike Baird and koalas

The rampant clearing that is threatened is eerily reminiscent of that which occurred in Queensland under Campbell Newman’s disastrous reign—a mess that the incumbent Labor government still hasn’t been able to clean up.

Added to the increasing intensity of native forest logging and loss of habitat for urban development, the pending wave of land clearing will push koalas to the brink in NSW says the National Parks Association of NSW (NPA).

Creation of new National Parks falls 95% under Coalition

New figures released today by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) shows the expansion of the National Park estate has almost ground to a halt since the Coalition came to power in 2011.

According to the NSW Report on Native Vegetation 2013-141 the average annual rate of National Park additions under the Coalition to 2013-14 is just 9,753ha—a 95% reduction on the previous six-year average of 173,965ha.2

A plan to protect Kosciuszko’s water catchments

Large numbers of the Wild Horse, a farm-animal escapee, are severely impacting the water catchment wetlands of the Australian Alps, including right across Kosciuszko National Park. In 2014, 35% of the Alps wetlands had been damaged. These high mountain wetlands are the very heart of the headwater catchment sources for our mightiest rivers, the Murray, Murrumbidgee and the Snowy and regrettably they are also a preferred grazing area for these heavy stock animals. Numbers of Wild Horses have grown from about 2000 to more than 6000 in just 11 years and they are causing great damage to the catchments. The NSW Government, in response to these threats has launched, in May 2016, a draft Wild Horse Management Plan for consultation … a plan, amongst other things, to protect the water catchments.