$3.5 million to fight land clearing stolen by NSW Environment Department

The Wilderness Society (Sydney) Inc
Media Release
11 June 2008

The Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) has today been accused by The Wilderness Society of stealing $3.5 million promised by Premier Iemma to crack down on illegal land clearing. The funding was provided last year to expand satellite monitoring but has been diverted to fund other programs.

“Land clearing is still an enormous problem in NSW” says Timothy King, State Campaign Manager for The Wilderness Society. “Land clearing creates greenhouse gas pollution1 and causes salinity, destroys rivers and kills wildlife”.

In 2006 the Premier committed an additional $3.5 million every year to extend satellite monitoring to end broadscale landclearing. Satellite monitoring is the only effective way of tracking the extent and location of illegal land clearing.

This commitment was reiterated by Minister Firth last week when said $3.5 million was in the budget ‘for high resolution satellite imagery to help stamp out illegal clearing’.

However TWS has uncovered that DECC has decided to ignore the Premier’s commitment and simply spend the money elsewhere.

“Instead of using that money to expand its monitoring of land clearing using high resolution imagery in key areas of the State DECC is using the money to fund a new vegetation mapping program – this money - $3.5 million every year - has effectively been stolen.”

“Despite the Premier’s personal commitment to tackle the problem of land clearing, DECC has no idea how much clearing is occurring.”

“While the Environment Minister is hosting drinks for environment groups in the Botanical Gardens to discuss future priorities, her own Department is diverting money given to tackle an existing problem. Minister Firth needs to ask her Department why it is has stopped regular satellite monitoring of land clearing across key areas of the State”.

1 Land clearing in NSW is estimated to create 11.4 million tonnes of CO2 every year - equivalent to keeping an additional 2.4 million cars on our roads.