It’s in everyone’s interests to ensure our environment stays healthy – including farmers. What did the Nats think they’d gain from this destructive game of brinkmanship?
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land clearing – Analysis and Comment
We should stop developing into high-risk areas, as the associated land clearing is too significant to our ecosystems and may still result in houses being lost.
Australia has been identified as a hotspot for emerging diseases, which occurs when human activities collide with a richness of animal species.
New research has revealed 100 plant and animal species have become extinct in the past two centuries – a far higher number than previously thought.
Politicians and the media often stoke tensions between the city and the country. Nowhere is this more common than on the issue of land clearing – and the consequences can be tragic.
What if the nightly news had regular updates on forest clearing, ocean temperatures and fossil fuel consumption? These indicators sit alongside temperatures as signs of climate change.
Environment Minister Sussan Ley has announced a review of Australia’s nature laws. The poor state of our biodiversity shows we must do a better job of protecting the places we love.
Aside from their intrinsic value, common bird species might be one of the only ways we connect with nature in our everyday lives. But these opportunities are under threat.
There are studies showing that farmers can have economic benefits from palm oil. However, they can also be impoverished by the commodity.
A staggering 7.7 million hectares of critical habitat has been destroyed since environment laws were enacted - and 93% was not referred to the federal government for assessment.
The Amazon is burning at record levels, and land clearing is to blame. The good news: we already know what we need to do to stop it.
A new petition is urging state and federal governments to rein in Australia’s rampant land clearing, which worsens the risk of bushfires and threatens to undo the work of the Emissions Reduction Fund.
Koalas can cope with the stresses of city life provided we plan urban developments in ways that help meet their basic needs.
Queensland’s new land-clearing laws are a huge missed opportunity.
Across large ares of Australia, rocky outcrops are being obliterated to open up more land for farming. But many of these “bush rocks” are refuges for fragile ecosystems.
Queensland’s new draft land-clearing laws aim to put the brakes on years of environmental destruction. But the bill contains several loopholes that are likely to stymie progress.
Australia’s federal environment laws are inadequate to halt Australia’s alarming rates of land clearing and species loss. A more robust set of laws are urgently needed.
The failed attempt to reinstate land clearing regulations in Queensland has prompted ‘panic clearing’, pushing Australia into the global top-ten deforesters.
The outgoing Threatened Species Commissioner has downplayed the importance of land clearing as a threat to Australia’s plants and animals. But it’s the biggest threat, and magnifies the others too.
Zero-burning policy could hurt small-holder farmers. The ban on the use of fire for land clearing has raised the costs to prepare their land for planting and to keep it pest-free.
More than 50 million birds, mammals and reptiles are thought to be killed each year in New South Wales and Queensland by the removal of native vegetation, and planning laws are failing to protect them.
Legal vegetation ‘thinning’ is contributing to high rates of land clearing, potentially causing problems for threatened species and ecosystems.
You’d hope we wouldn’t flatten the pyramids to build a highway. But that’s exactly what’s happening to the world’s natural heritage sites.
Since 1992, an area of land two-thirds the size of Australia has been converted to human use.
Australia’s Great Northern Savannas are the largest and most intact ecosystem of their kind on Earth. But they still face pressure from grazing, mining and agricultural expansion.