To get to that conclusion, they have compared the amount of cleared land (3.78 million hectares) with the amount of land regrown (4.19 million hectares), to come up with a "net forest clearing" figure of negative-401,000 hectares. 'Reclearing' refers to any forest younger than that.). Text available under Creative Commons license. Because the analysis only covered up to the year 2017, it excludes the effects of the catastrophic 2019-20 bushfire season, with WWF saying the accelerating effects of climate change made the need for Australian governments to increase protections for wildlife and habitat more urgent. Culture is how an organisation thinks, acts, and interacts. But Dr Taylor said ultimately stronger laws are what drive down land clearing. According to Dr Taylor that means a dense forest can be thinned from 95 per cent canopy to 21 per cent canopy, for instance, without registering as having been cleared under the NGA method. "People do see their local favourite patch of bush being bulldozed for a housing or industrial estate, or a road That turns out to be a small percentage of the total destruction in Eastern Australia. Also like Tasmania, native forest logging in Tasmania has been a hotly contested issue. Across the wide range of rainfall and soil conditions that support forest, most of Australia's 'Native forest' category of forest is dominated by eucalypts (77%) and acacias (8%). This map shows the extent and distribution of Australia's forests by forest type: PNG [1.1 MB], PDF [3.6 MB]. View an interactive version of this map in ArcGIS Online map viewer here. Australia's native forests occur in a broad range of geographic landscapes and climatic environments, and contain a wide array of mostly endemic species (that is, species found nowhere else) combining to form unique and complex ecosystems. A key element of the approach adopted in the NFPS involved the negotiation of Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) between the Australian Government and some state governments. The beef industry must show leadership and urgently change its practices to stop selling beef linked to deforestation. That's why I'm leading WWF-Australia's work to help our country transition from a global deforestation hotspot to a world leader in reforestation and ecological restoration. The main cause of deforestation is agriculture (poorly planned infrastructure is emerging as a big threat too) and the main cause of forest degradation is illegal logging. For species like the koala, we know the biggest problem is the destruction of their forest homes. There is no official data on how widespread this may be, however Dr Taylor said he had found numerous instances by trawling through satellite imagery several of which he showed to the ABC. The extent of northern Australia in this analysis includes Western Australia and Queensland north of the Tropic of Capricorn and the entire Northern Territory. The system used to estimate tree cover/loss for the NGA defines woody vegetation as of a "height or potential height greater than 2 metres, crown cover greater than 20 per cent and a minimum patch size of 0.2 hectares". This map shows the distribution of the Eucalypt native forest type across Australia: PNG [3.2 MB], PDF [0.7 MB]. But critics say RFAs allow logging operations to bypass federal environment laws and often result in the habitat of threatened species being cleared without any environmental impact assessment. Investing in health and disease prevention is the best cure, Identifying potential risks of COVID-19 and modern slavery in supply chain, How smart approaches to decarbonisation can generate alpha. Actual ESG: growth investing in change | Baillie Gifford, A year in wealth management - what it means for 2023, Nicki Hutley: Policy, the budget and risks for investors. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work. State and territory governments have primary responsibility for forest management. At WWF, we work in Australia and in our Asia-Pacific backyard to protect endangered species and habitats, meet the challenge of climate change, and build a world where people live in harmony with nature. "The LULUCF activity tables are very primitive," Dr Taylor said. The definition of forest used by Australia's National Forest Inventory is: An area, incorporating all living and non-living components, that is dominated by trees having usually a single stem and a mature or potentially mature stand height exceeding 2 metres and with existing or potential crown cover of overstorey strata about equal to or greater than 20 per cent. It expands on a 2015 report by WWF which named 11 hotspots, with eastern Australia also appearing on that list. Here, I describe the deforestation trends, drivers and policy responses in Australia over the last four decades. The latest figures show that deforestation in Queensland is still rampant, damaging the health of the Great Barrier Reef, destroying biodiversity and worsening climate change. With clearing on this scale, no wonder they were recently declared endangered in Queensland, NSW and the ACT. That's because of stronger laws coming into play in Queensland and New South Wales.". woodland, open, closed, or unknown): PNG [0.9 MB], PDF [3.6 MB]. "There is no underestimate of areas or emissions reported in the National Greenhouse Accounts," the spokesperson said. Learn more about deforestation in Queensland. Forests extend across Australia's northern tropical regions, and down the east coast through sub-tropical regions to temperate cool-season wet and coldwet zones in the south-east; they are also found in Mediterranean climate zones in the south-east and south-west. This map shows the distribution of Australia's native forests by crown cover class (i.e. Land clearing in Australia describes the removal of native vegetation and deforestation in Australia.Land clearing involves the removal of native vegetation and habitats, including the bulldozing of native bushlands, forests, savannah, woodlands and native grasslands and the draining of natural wetlands for replacement with agriculture, urban and other land uses. The countries with high rates of deforestation include Brazil, Bolivia, Madagascar and Borneo. Land clearing rates rocketed after the axing of restrictions in Queensland and NSW placing eastern Australia alongside the most infamous places in the world for forest destruction, said WWF-Australia conservation scientist Dr Martin Taylor. More than 90 per cent of that land was classified as reclearing, meaning it had been cleared at least once in the previous 30 years. Over 43 million hectares, an area roughly the size of Morocco, was lost in these 'deforestation fronts' between 2004 and 2017. Five reasons investors should adopt an active versus passive ESG approach, Climate change is changing the outlook for energy utilities, Bank Australia sets interim 2030 net zero target, UniSuper updates progress on net zero target, Science-Based Targets an indicator of future climate action: Federated Hermes, Woolworths commits to ambitious GHG emissions cuts, Wilderness Society links deforestation to beef production, supply chain risk, Coca Cola, WWF-Australia, farmers mark 10 years of Project Catalyst, Global Canopy Programme appoints executive director, NCD launches Soft Commodities Forest-risk Assessment Tool, CDP, We Mean Business partner for Road to Paris. If we go back to our 1-kilometre-wide strip of land, South Australia's total clearing stretches almost 1,100km from Newcastle to Melbourne. Nearly 50% of our forest cover has been cleared in the last two centuries, making Australia one of the worst developed countries for deforestation. We acknowledge sovereignty was never ceded.Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website may contain images, names and voices of people who are deceased. This map shows the distribution of burnt forest in Australia, by the number of times each hectare was burnt in the period 201112 to 201516: PNG [1.0 MB], PDF [2.1MB]. ('Primary' refers to forests 30 years and older. With deforestation comes extinction: Australia is the worst offending country for mammal extinctions. To satisfy investors, boards need to take succession planning more seriously. Imagine a strip of land 1-kilometre wide, and 15-kilometres long that's equivalent to the 1500 hectares cleared in the ACT. As well as land clearing, Western Australia's forests are under threat from climate change. "Let's not look for the same old bulldoze-and-dig-it-up model of recovery. New drone footage has exposed shocking clearing of likely koala habitat in Far North Queensland, as our latest report, Whats at steak?, reveals more than one million hectares of forest was cleared for beef from 2014-2019. We acknowledge sovereignty was never ceded.Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website may contain images, names and voices of people who are deceased. 2023 The Wilderness Society, 5 things you need to know about Deforestation in Australia, majority of landholders are eager to embrace new ways, 7 ways to protect WA's most valuable natural asset. Without a liveable climate, the vulnerable ecosystems that sustain us, wont. The lion's share of land cleared in Western Australia was for agriculture, horticulture and forestry. Let's look to a green recovery that's built on conservation, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture.". Monitoring satellite imagery and recording suspicious clearing. Tens of millions of native animals are killed annually by this scale of clearing. This map shows the distribution of the Melaleuca native forest type across Australia: PNG [2.0 MB], PDF [0.5 MB]. The categories are: Indigenous owned and managed; Indigenous managed; Indigenous co-managed; having Other special rights (Note: Indigenous is used here to refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people): PNG [0.8 MB], PDF [2.3 MB]. Annual subscription for $129.95 for 1 year. But the National Greenhouse Accounts (NGA) figures for Queensland show only 304,000 and 254,400 hectares were cleared for the 2017 and 2018 periods almost 190,000 hectares less. Over roughly the last 20 years, koalas numbers have declined by almost 50% across Queensland and they have continued to do so. Subscribe to FS Sustainability to get the latest ESG news and research. Read the, Weighing ESG risks of nickel as a critical mineral: ISS ESG, Hybrid working can reduce carbon emissions by up to 90%, No role for monetary policy to address climate change, $500bn investment needed to decarbonise NEM, Turning PV waste into investment opportunity, 140 years to gender parity in finance: OMFIF, Government to fund sustainable finance taxonomy development, South Korea leads with ESG fund disclosure taskforce and anti-greenwash laws, Executive directors overwhelmingly male: AICD. Australia has lost 27% of its rainforest, 19% of open forest, 11% of woodland forest, and 28% of mallee forest since 1750. Taylor said the analysis focused on so-called hotspot parts of the eastern states where land-clearing rates were highest. Subscribe to gain unlimited access to news, research and analysis of ESG factors for ASX listed companies and investors. If we want to protect Australia's remarkable biodiversity, including its most iconic animals, we must protect habitat. The Australian, state and territory governments are all signatories to the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement (NFPS). , Carbon emissions released by land clearing across Australia are equivalent to about a third of the total emissions released by all of the coal-fired power stations in the country. The most recent land-clearing data from Queensland for 2019-20 reveals a dire state of affairs in this state alone with: 418,656 hectares of forest and bushland was bulldozed between 2019/20; 85% of the deforestation and land clearing in Queensland was to make space for pasture; More than 180,000 ha was destroyed in Great Barrier Reef catchments, placing further serious stress on the natural wonder. The total area of land cleared in Queensland was 2,446,600 hectares. But in Eastern Australia, agriculture is by far the biggest driver of deforestation. The only nationally consistent data comes from the Federal Government's National Greenhouse Accounts (NGA). "Queensland's SLATs data undergoes extensive manual editing and verification to ensure a high level of confidence in the data for Queensland's monitoring and reporting requirements.". An analysis of the imagery for Unearthed has identified 13,500 hectares of deforestation since 2018 - an area more than twice the size of Manhattan - across 57 beef cattle properties in . We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. Global infrastructure consulting firm AECOM has announced the creation of a specialized team dedicated to delivering nature-based client solutions in Australia and New Zealand. We've driven 29 mammals to extinction since European colonisation and more than 1,700 others are threatened or endangered. Undertaking research and collecting data to support informed decisions and policies. "It's ridiculous to say there is more forest [now than 10 years ago]," he said. The moratorium on logging of around 356,000 hectares of that forest lifted in April of this year, and there are fears that the forestry wars of old could kick off again. Just over 49% of alerts have been in areas classified as high or very high risk. This map shows the distribution of forests in northern Australia, by forest type: PNG [1.4 MB], PDF [0.9 MB].
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