Land Clearing

20 November 2002

AUSTRALIA'S LANDCLEARING RATES SKYROCKET

New independent research has shown that Australia's land clearing rate is much higher than previous estimates, increasing by 22% to reach a total of 687,000 hectares. Australia is now ranked fifth worst land clearer in the world overtaking Mexico. These figures mean that over fifty football fields of native trees, wildflowers and wildlife habitat are destroyed every hour.

"We must avoid the mistakes of Queensland, New South Wales and other States and not follow the unsustainable path of broad scale landclearing" Jann Crase, Northern Woodlands and Wetlands Campaigner said today.

"The Territory has the opportunity now to protect our plants and animals by developing land clearing legislation that applies across all land types and tenures to avoid land management problems suffered by southern States."

"We are calling on the Northern Territory government to commit to developing suitable landclearing legislation with the community, that will apply across all tenures and provide protection for the Territory environment."

"Land clearing regulations would reduce the impacts from clearing and allow us to know how much clearing is occurring and where it is happening, which is information that we currently don't have" Ms Crase, concluded.

For more information on Land Clearing contact ECNT:
Phone: 08 8981 1984
Email: ecnt@octa4.net.au

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