Concern has been raised over widespread land clearing in Queensland, which may be occurring without any public consultation.

A landholder in the Gulf of Carpentaria has been awarded a permit to clear 28,000 hectares for irrigated crops.

The successful application is the result changes to Queensland's native vegetation laws last year, which removed restrictions in order to increase agricultural production.

The site for clearing is connected by the Gilbert River to the planned site of the Integrated Food and Energy Development (IFED), which is also set to undergo large-scale development to set up a $2billion multi-purpose farm.

Together, the two developments are a clear sign that heavy-hoofed animal production will continue in the region, despite the lessons of the past.

The owner of Strathmore Station, Scott Harris, says the clearing is necessary for progress, and that there are some safety measures in place.

“We're very, very careful not to go near wetlands, buffer zones along rivers and watercourses. All those buffer zones vary, but if people get this idea that we're out to clear every tree, that's nonsense,” Mr Harris told the ABC.

“If we got going at full capacity, we could be looking at 200 jobs on Strathmore alone, then you add on the flow-on effects to the local community.”

Wilderness Society campaigner Karen Touchie says there was no opportunity for public input.

“There could be land clearing occurring all over and we simply have no idea what's going on,” she said.

“We don't know how much land is getting cleared in Queensland because the government isn't required to notify the public about the applications.

“We only stumbled across this application by accident.”

Queensland Minister for Natural Resources Andrew Cripps says the process is as opaque as ever.

“There's never been any requirement for a public notification process for vegetation management activity, but what I can say is that applications received for high-value agriculture developments are very rigorously assessed,” he said.

Landscape ecologist Professor Clive McAlpine says there is a clear risk to native wildlife, but this is not the largest land clearing the state has seen.

“That region is rich in savannah birds. Their habitat is going to be destroyed, and you're going to get a lot of sediment going into the rivers and down into the Gulf,” he said.

“I'm concerned because this region hasn't experienced this scale of clearing before.

“It's not as big at the Brigalow Scheme, which cleared three or four million hectares back in the Sixties and Seventies.

“In more recent times, there was 750,000 hectares cleared in 1999 when the Queensland Government was trying to wind back the land clearing and there was panic clearing as a result.”