Impacts of Landclearing; The Impacts of Approved Clearing of Native Vegetation on Australian Wildlife in New South Wales.

Executive Summary This report uses the amount of land in New South Wales approved by the State Government for clearing between 1998 and 2005 inclusively to calculate the impacts of land clearing on the State’s wildlife. According to these calculations more than 104 million native mammals, birds and reptiles have died or will die as a result of the clearing of native vegetation in NSW approved between 1998 and 2005. These include: • over 11 million mammals with possums and gliders most severely affected as well as many millions of kangaroos, wallabies, bandicoots, koalas and wombats; • around 13 million birds comprising mostly woodland and forest birds and including species of honeyeaters and babblers that are under threat of extinction in NSW; and • more than 80 million reptiles such as skinks and geckos. These estimates are highly conservative and the true mortality is likely to be substantially higher than those estimated in this report. Due to inadequate or uncertain public data, the figures in this study do not include the numbers of animals killed as a result of illegal clearing that occurred in NSW from 1998 to 2005, or as a result of exempt clearing (ie legally permitted clearing that does not require approval) that occurred during this time. These other clearing activities also result in the deaths of many millions of native animals. For example, around 5 million mammals, birds and reptiles would have been killed by the amount of illegal clearing estimated by the Auditor-General to have occurred in 2005. This study does not include any estimates of the amphibians, fish and invertebrates that were also killed as a direct or indirect result of the approved clearing of native vegetation. The study used the known record of approved clearing of native vegetation in NSW from 1998 to 2005 inclusively that was published by the Auditor-General in his 2006 report, Regulating the Clearing of Native Vegetation: Follow-up of 2002 Performance Audit. Between 1998 and 2005 inclusively, the NSW Government approved 639,930 hectares for clearing under its native vegetation legislation. NSW’s wildlife is seriously threatened and under increasing pressure from a range of traditional threats, such as the clearing of native vegetation and the impacts of exotic pests, as well as more recent factors, such as climate change. NSW can stop the loss and degradation of valuable habitats immediately by arresting the extent of clearing and fragmentation of native vegetation, particularly west of the Great Dividing Range, and by undertaking the level of research and monitoring that is essential to managing natural resources at sustainable levels. Alternatively, NSW can continue to allow native habitats to be lost or degraded and experience irreversible regional population declines and extinctions