Every year in Queensland, hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests and bushland are bulldozed. Threatened species habitat, forests in catchments for the Great Barrier Reef and mature forests are destroyed by deforestation—mostly for grazing and pasture for beef production.

As exposed on the ABC, much of this deforestation occurs with little to no government assessment, due to the state’s weak categorisation of native vegetation and a systemic failure at the Commonwealth level to call-in deforestation for assessment under Federal environment law.

Dave Copeman, Queensland Conservation Council Director said, “the strong community response to the media story shows Queenslanders are shocked at the continuingly high rates of deforestation in our state that make us a global deforestation hotspot.”

A joint Queensland Conservation Council and Wilderness Society investigation found over 3700ha of legal land clearing of potential threatened species habitat in a Consolidated Pastures property, called Wrotham Park. As covered by the ABC on 7:30 last night, the clearing was undertaken throughout 2021, and is an example of broad scale legal land clearing leading to species loss.