Australia: A very high level of illegal clearing that the Minister is powerless to stop?

A Senate committee last week, as well as research contained in a forthcoming book, have concluded that the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity (EPBC) Act has significant gaps in its powers. Since the law was introduced under the Howard government in 1999, successive federal governments have used the law to refuse approval to just nine projects, despite receiving at least 2700 referrals in that time.

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Mr Macintosh told The Age one of the biggest deficiencies in the
scheme was its inability to reduce native vegetation clearing for
agricultural use, showing that while 2.5 million hectares of land for
farming was cleared during the life of the act, just 16,000 hectares
had been protected in some form.

He added that exemptions in for the forestry industry had meant a further clearing of 80 million hectares of native trees for commercial use since 1999. Mr Macintosh said the low number of agricultural “referrals” compared to the large amount of native vegetation clearance meant there was a very high level of illegal clearing that the Minister was powerless to stop.

The Senate committee also found the act was underfunded, meaning there was very little money for Federal Government staff to prosecute developers who defied environmental conditions, and to check that the law was not being broken. Late last year Mr Garrett convened a five-person panel to conduct an independent review of the EPBC Act. Mr Garrett has asked the panel to take into “consideration” the Senate review’s findings.

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http://www.theage.com.au/environment/green-law-lacks-teeth-studies-find-20090322-95oo.html