This month, Labor is making big decisions at Labor National Conference that will shape its next election platform.
Ending broad-scale land clearing and native forest logging is being hotly debated within the Labor Party. Pressure from the community now could deliver real protections for forests Australia-wide.
Your Labor Member of Parliament (MP) or Labor Senators all have a voice and a vote at Labor National Conference. Send them a quick email urging them to deliver changes that stop the bulldozers and chainsaws tearing down forests and woodlands.
Barely regulated land clearing and native forest logging are destroying the homes of threatened wildlife, helping invasive plants and predators spread, degrading soils and freshwater streams, and making climate heating worse.
Let’s all speak up for forests, woodlands and wildlife now.
Key asks for your Labor representatives:
- Support the motion at Labor National Conference to end broad-scale land clearing and native forest logging in this term of government.
- Protect forests and woodlands as a crucial step to ending extinction and limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celcius.
- Advocate within your party to urgently deliver strong new nature laws that protect forests Australia-wide. New laws must cover all industries including the timber industry and be legally enforced by an independent regulator.
Key forest issues by state and territory:
[toggle-tab id="toggle-1" more-text="New South Wales" less-text="Hide New South Wales"]
[toggle-1]
- bulldozing native vegetation for beef and timber remains rampant with barely any oversight from the state or federal governments.
- In May, ACF’s crowd-sourced investigations exposed unregulated bulldozing of crucial habitat for the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater – one of our rarest and most vulnerable birds.
- Land clearing tripled in New South Wales in the last decade. The promised Great Koala National Park hasn’t been delivered and logging continues in the area slated for protection.
[/toggle-1]
[toggle-tab id="toggle-2" more-text="Queensland" less-text="Hide Queensland"]
[toggle-2]
- Forests and woodlands in Queensland are being wiped out faster than anywhere else in the country largely to expand pasture for sheep and cattle.
- This impacts hundreds of threatened species, including the koala, that continue to have their homes destroyed.
- Almost half of all land-clearing in Queensland is in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area, which pushes pollution and run-off onto coral reefs already devastated by bleaching.
[/toggle-2]
[toggle-tab id="toggle-3" more-text="Victoria" less-text="Hide Victoria"]
[toggle-3]
- The Victorian Government made a welcome announcement in May 2023 to end native forest logging at the start of 2024, however questions remain over the details and whether the ban will apply to logging across the entire state.
- There is no guarantee that native forest logging will stop in the western half of Victoria, and could in fact intensify with logging stopping in the east.
- That’s why we need national protections for forests and woodlands that apply to all regions and industries, via strong new nature laws and an independent regulator to enforce them.
[/toggle-3]
[toggle-tab id="toggle-4" more-text="Tasmania" less-text="Hide Tasmania"]
[toggle-4]
- Native forest logging for timber is still destroying the habitat of some of our most threatened animals, including the Swift Parrot.
- With Victoria and Western Australia set to end native forest logging by 2024, there’s a risk logging in Tassie will intensify to make up the shortfall in timber.
- Harsh anti-protest laws are penalising community members peacefully protesting the destruction of forests. We need national nature laws that restore community trust – with an independent regulator that holds the industries causing the destruction accountable.
[/toggle-4]
[toggle-tab id="toggle-5" more-text="Northern Territory" less-text="Hide Northern Territory"]
[toggle-5]
- The Northern Territory’s biodiversity is truly remarkable on a global scale and it supports the world’s most intact tropical savanna ecosystem.
- But a push to expand cotton, cattle pasture, and fracking for gas is pushing the top end’s ecosystems to collapse.
- Pastoral land makes up almost half of the entire Territory. The NT has seen a four-fold increase in clearing over the last 4 years with potentially a further 200,000 hectares of bush and wetland destined to be bulldozed.
[/toggle-5]
[toggle-tab id="toggle-6" more-text="Western Australia" less-text="Hide Western Australia"]
[toggle-6]
- Habitat destruction impacts more threatened species than any other pressure, and yet in Western Australia habitat continues to be bulldozed at an alarming rate.
- WA comes second only to Queensland for the most habitat approved to be destroyed in Australia – over 66,000 hectares of land was cleared of native vegetation in WA between 2012 and 2021.
- in 2023, two property companies were fined only $250,000 for destroying 10 hectares of endangered black cockatoo habitat for urban sprawl in Baldivis. The project is expected to earn them about $160 million. Enforcement of the law and penalties aren’t strong enough to deter businesses from destroying nature.
[/toggle-6]
Banner image: Ali Sanderson