The NSW Government’s Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020
is not only a massive step backwards for koala protection in NSW, but
also removes many other critical environmental protections on private
land, according to Greens MP and Chair of the Inquiry into Koala
Populations and their Habitat, Cate Faehrmann.
The bill winds
back existing environmental protections and expressly prohibits the
protection of any further core koala habitat from threats such as
logging and land clearing on private land.
Attached are Dailan Pugh’s slides. The Environmental Defenders Office Brief on the changes can be found here. Download the MPs and journalist’s briefing here.
Greens MP and Environment spokesperson and Chair of the NSW Parliamentary Koala Inquiry Cate Faehrmann said:
“This bill isn’t a
‘compromise’ on the new koala policy. It takes koala protections back 25
years at a time when we need to be strengthening laws to protect koala
habitat. We lost maybe 10,000 koalas in NSW in the black summer fires.
If this bill passes, the Government may as well sign be signing their
death warrant.”
“The updated
Koala SEPP has been years in the making but now all that hard work has
been scrapped to appease the National Party and the powerful timber and
farming lobbies.
“We know the
Koala is on track for extinction before 2050, we know that existing
protections are not enough. How on earth can the Premier wind back koala
protections and insist she wants to be the ‘Premier that saves the
Koala’. With the introduction of this bill, she is about to become the
Premier that kills the Koala.
“The bill
ignores the recommendations of several inquiries and pre-empts the
reviews into the land management framework and private native forestry.
Part of me wonders if Gladys and Stokes even comprehend just how
devastating these changes are, it’s that hard to fathom how they could
have accepted this ‘compromise’, said Ms Faehrmann.
Dailan Pugh, President of the North East Forest Alliance, said:
"At a
time when Koala populations are crashing, with climate change induced
droughts and fires decimating survivors, and predictions of extinction
in the wild by 2050, it is reprehensible that the Berejiklian Government
is changing the rules to remove protection for core Koala habitat so as
to allow it to be logged and cleared indiscriminately.”
"To
appease the loggers these changes are designed to wind back 25 years of
protection for Koalas and other threatened species on private lands, in
their hour of greatest need,” he said
Bellingen Shire Greens Mayor Dominic King said:
“This is
the final nail for Koalas in our region. After the extreme five year
drought, the catastrophic fires that destroyed vast areas of Koala
habitat, the increase in post fire logging, the findings of the
Parliamentary Inquiry 2020 which predicted that Koalas would be extinct
by 2050, we now have a proposal that will allow the logging of core
koala habitat in our shire. This effectively removes any protection
afforded to core koala habitat in Bellingen despite the fact that has
been endorsed by both Council and the NSW government, and baffling has
not been referred in the amending bill.”
Contact: Jacob Miller - 0428 837 292
Environmental Defenders Office: Rachel Walmsley - 0415 508 251
North East Forest Alliance: Dailan Pugh - 0400 711 054
Mayor of Bellingen Shire: Dominic King - 0499 984 164