‘Perverse outcomes': NSW a deforestation hotspot on par with Indonesia
The figures from the annual NSW Statewide Landcover and Tree Study (SLATS) released on Monday reveal 66,498 hectares of the state's native vegetation were destroyed in 2023 – the equivalent of 237 Sydney CBDs or four times the size of Royal National Park – and more than half was unallocated to any law. The figure is a 40 per cent rise from the revised figure of 47,388 hectares cleared in 2022.
The clearing of woody vegetation (trees and shrubs) jumped from 21,137 hectares in 2022 to 32,847 hectares in 2023. Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Nathaniel Pelle said this was 'on par with the amount of forest that is cleared every year for palm oil in Indonesia' – about 30,000 hectares in 2023.
'It's a lot ... for a rich country to be still clearing [more than] 30,000 hectares of forest and woodland in a year, and for that clearing rate to be going up,' said Pelle.
The SLATS data also revealed 33,651 hectares of non-woody vegetation (grasslands, ferns and ground cover) was cleared, up from 26,251 hectares the previous year.
Pelle said the surge in 2023 was probably 'panic clearing' ahead of anticipated legal reforms, since Labor came to power promising to fix land-clearing laws that had been loosened by the former Coalition government in 2016.
'If you telegraph that you're going to do something, and then don't, it can have perverse outcomes,' Pelle said. 'We need more than just words from the Minns government on reforming these rules and their enforcement or compliance.'
In late 2024, the government overhauled the 2016 Biodiversity Offset Scheme, which allows developers to pay to destroy biodiversity, acting on a scathing review by former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry. The government also promised to reform the Local Land Services Act, which governs clearing on private land, but its proposed legislation remains in consultation stage.
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