Proposed loosening of NSW's land-clearing controls could leave more than a third of the state's woodlands exposed to bulldozers including prime koala habitat, a report commissioned by WWF-Australia has found.
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The study by consultants Eco Logical Australia examined how the potential impacts of proposed changes to the Equity Code as part of the Baird government's new biodiversity conservation plans that would ease limits on some vegetation clearing.
It found the elimination of existing controls – such as curbs on properties smaller than 100 hectares and where protected vegetation makes up less than 10 per cent of holdings – would open up 8 million hectares of forests to clearing.
That total, which amounts to about 38 per cent of the state's woodlands, also includes 2.2 million hectares of koala habitat or roughly 10 per cent of the state's tally, the report said.
"We are staring down the barrel of broadscale land clearing in NSW," Francesca Andreoni, WWF's forest and woodland conservation policy manager, said. "Under what's proposed tree clearing will be out of control."
Among the various codes, changes to the equity one is among those causing the most concern, she said.
WWF said it commissioned the report in part because the government had failed to provide estimates of the impact of its proposed changes and had denied all freedom of information requests.
The government is expected to table the new biodiversity conservation bill in Parliament later this month with a plan have it voted on in November. It will replace the native vegetation and threatened species acts.
NSW Environment Minister Mark Speakman dismissed the report as "alarmist in the extreme", and stressed that critically endangered ecological communities including core koala habitat would continue to be protected.
Farmers would also face other restrictions, such as on highly cleared properties, and would be encouraged with $240 million over the first four years alone to pursue private conservation efforts. The qualifications "make these numbers fanciful and impossible", Mr Speakman said.
And while looser codes would potentially open up more land for clearing, farmers would have to consider the cost of clearing.
"The great majority of land that may be legally capable of being cleared will not be cleared," the minister said.
Mehreen Faruqi, Greens environment spokeswoman, said "practically everything across the state is fair game" if the proposed laws pass.
"The government keeps calling koalas an iconic species yet is greenlighting the clearing of up to 2 million hectares of their habitat," Dr Faruqi said. "The whole package of eight codes will cause unprecedented environmental destruction across the state."
Penny Sharpe, Labor's environment spokeswoman, called on Premier Baird to abandon the proposed changes.
"Native animals will be the casualties of the land clearing laws," Ms Sharpe said. "You cannot protect wildlife or reverse biodiversity loss of there is no habitat left for native animals to live."
Dr Andreoni said some parts of the state were particularly vulnerable to broadscale clearing, with as much of 84 per cent of the remaining bush in the western local land services area at risk. (See map below.)
In the north west, 45 per cent of total mapped woody vegetation or almost 800,000 hectares, was exposed, the report estimates.
