A landholder’s controversial plans to clear almost 2,000 hectares of native vegetation on Queensland’s Cape York were denied after he rejected government advice that it would put five threatened species at risk.
Kingvale station owner Scott Harris, who wanted to clear the land for cropping, had also refused to pay for ecological surveys before clearing, according to a detailed statement provided to environmental campaigners by the environment minister, Sussan Ley, and seen by the Guardian.
Guardian Australia revealed in December 2020 that Ley had rejected the plan to clear eucalypt forest and melaleuca swamps in a catchment running into the Great Barrier Reef.
Ley released a statement of reasons to the Wilderness Society on 24 December with details about the process and her decision.
In the statement, Ley said she was ready to allow the application with conditions, but Harris “had not given his consent to these conditions”.
Ley’s refusal under Australia’s national environment laws was a rare example of a minister using the national powers to deny a development application.
The power has been used just 24 times since the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act came into force in 2000.
Campbell Newman’s Queensland government had granted a permit for the Kingvale clearing in 2014, but the plan was referred to the federal government to assess its likely environmental impacts.
Environmental campaigners successfully went to court in 2018 to force a more comprehensive assessment of the Kingvale plan. Environment groups lined up to oppose the plan, encouraging more than 6,000 public submissions.
Ley wrote that the clearing would be likely to have a significant impact on five species: the bare-rumped sheathtail bat, northern quoll, golden-shouldered parrot, antbed parrot moth and red goshawk.
To protect the species, Ley wanted surveys carried out before any clearing took place, and an offset area identified, with a management plan that would improve habitat.
Harris had offered not to clear trees on an area of the property the same size as that being cleared, but Ley’s statement said Harris did not propose to manage the area.
In the statement, Ley said there had been “considerable correspondence” between Harris’s legal representative and the government.
Ley wrote that as a result, she understood Harris’s position was that there was no evidence that any matters of national environmental significance existed on the property, or that clearing would have any impact on threatened species.
Harris was not able to consent to the offset conditions, Ley wrote, and he had not agreed to pay for pre-clearance surveys.
Ley had invited Harris to a meeting with her and environment department staff, but Harris “did not take up these invitations”, she wrote.
Ley wrote that without mitigation, the clearing would have contributed a “substantial new and ongoing source of pollutants”, with fertilisers, sediment and pesticides going downstream into the Great Barrier Reef’s waters.
The area proposed for the clearing drains into two rivers – the Hann and Kennedy – which run for 200km before reaching the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park at Princess Charlotte Bay.
Ley said the Queensland government’s development permit required erosion mitigation measures, but she wanted further steps, including soil conservation, groundcover maintenance and sediment management.
Gemma Plesman, a senior campaigner at the Wilderness Society, said it was estimated there were fewer than 1,500 golden-shouldered parrots left in the wild, and Kingvale had habitat suited to the bird.
She said: “The fact that our system would even assess and consider the destruction of suitable habitat in the first place is preposterous.”
She said surveys found termite mounds that the parrot and the northern quoll used for shelter, which would have been bulldozed.
The fact that Ley was willing to allow the plan subject to offsets exposed a flaw in national environment laws, Plesman said.
“Any system that would have allowed the destruction of mature habitat for endangered species will continue to lock in the loss of those species.
“Our federal environment laws need to be strengthened so that old growth and important forest for endangered species like the golden shouldered parrot are off limits from destruction.”
Representatives for Harris did not respond to email, text and voicemail messages requesting comment.
