A new analysis has found that the Australian government is “aggravating extinction” through land-clearing approvals. 

A report by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has found that the pace at which the Australia’s Federal Government is approving the destruction of habitat has increased in recent years, despite continued warnings of an escalating extinction crisis. 

The federal government has approved the destruction of more than 200,000 hectares of threatened species habitat – a total area larger than Adelaide’s entire metropolitan zone – in the last ten years.

The investigation by the ACF reveals:

  • Koalas lost more habitat to federally-approved destruction than any other animal, with more than 25,000 hectares of koala habitat approved for destruction in 2011–21, around a fifth of which was for a single project: the Olive Downs coal mine in Queensland. 

  • Greater gliders (7,400ha), swift parrots (2,500ha), forest red-tailed black-cockatoos (1,800ha) and spot-tailed quolls (1,200ha) also had large areas of habitat approved for demolition.

  • The rate of destruction is rapidly increasing – in the five years to 2016 the government approved the destruction of 80,000 hectares of threatened species habitat, but the amount went up to 120,000 hectares in the following five years.

  • Mining accounted for 72 per cent of the total habitat destruction approved under the national environment law, but this is the tip of the iceberg, as clearing for agriculture is rarely assessed under this law and native forest logging is exempt altogether.

  • More habitat destruction was approved in Queensland than in all the other states and territories combined.

“This investigation exposes the cumulative impact of the government’s individual decisions to approve the destruction of the habitat Australia’s threatened species need to survive,” says ACF’s national nature campaigner Jess Abrahams.

“It shows how over the last decade, rather than protecting our most vulnerable and beloved native animals, the federal government has been aggravating extinction.

“Sadly, Australia is a world leader in annihilating nature.”

Federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, says the ACF’s analysis did not take into account offset requirements to protect threatened species or how much approved clearing had ultimately occurred.