Coles and Woolworths are under pressure to honour their deforestation-free beef commitments after an Australian Conservation Foundation investigation detected 150 land clearing cases with the majority linked to beef production.
The native bushland bulldozed is more than 33,000 hectares, which is the size of ten Sydney Harbours.
It included Gondwana-era rainforest and critically endangered woodlands that provide habitat for threatened species such as quolls and koalas.
“The Bulldozers and broken promises report is just a snapshot of Australia’s deforestation problem, with a minority of laggards in the beef industry ensuring Australia keeps its title as a global deforestation hotspot,” said ACF’s deforestation expert and report author Nathaniel Pelle.
“More forest is bulldozed in Queensland for beef by those few laggards than for palm oil in Indonesia.”
The largest case of beef-related deforestation exceeded 1,700 hectares, at Wombinoo Station in the Great Barrier Reef catchment near Cairns. It’s not the first time deforestation has been detected on the property.
On average, almost half the clearing in Queensland occurs in Great Barrier Reef catchments.
“Our most iconic reef is being choked to death by muddy sediment caused by the bulldozing of trees upstream – it is unacceptable for this level of destruction to be still happening, despite recent law changes,” Mr Pelle said.
This investigation identified 11 cases on beef properties in the reef catchment, with clearing still ongoing in July 2026 on at least one property at Hervey Range west of Townsville.
“Flying over the property at Hervey Range you could see firsthand the bulldozing of mature eucalypt trees right up to the edge of waterways that flow into the Great Barrier Reef,” Mr Pelle said.
It appears federal approvals were not granted for any of the properties exposed in this investigation. Around half occurred after reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in December 2025.
The investigation, which involved 1625 citizen scientists, found the bulldozed forests also included habitat for threatened species such as koalas, quolls, greater gliders and pink cockatoos.
Who’s to blame?
Australia’s biggest supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, promised to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains by the end of 2025, but both have conceded in their 2026 sustainability reports that they have not implemented those targets. McDonald’s, Australia’s biggest beef purchaser also has a deforestation target it is yet to implement.
“If supermarkets and fast food chains can’t trace the beef they sell to deforestation-free properties, neither they nor their customers can know if it’s linked to the destruction of koalas’ homes or contributing to the erosion that is choking the reef,” Mr Pelle said.
“To protect native animals like the koala and save the reef, every sausage and steak sold by Coles and Woolworths, and every burger at Hungry Jack’s and McDonald’s, should be traceable to one of the many farmers who are deforestation-free.”
Read the report: Bulldozers and broken promises
Image: Muddy sediment runs out to the Great Barrier Reef, suffocating coral and marine life. Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of the Tully, Murray and Herbert River plumes, 6 February 2025, extracted by TropWater/James Cook University.