Consternation is growing among local landholders who have received approval to clear their land but are now being hit with stop-work and rehabilitation orders.
Jillian Prince, at Lachlan Downs in the south of the shire, said they had followed the required approval land clearing processes on their property as directed by NSW Local Land Services (LLS) only to later be directed by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) to halt works and restore areas that had already been cleared.
“Local Land Services, they’re our local guys that know our landscape and we get approval for what we do.
“We get what is called a property vegetation plan (PVP) and we can manage land with what they put together,” Jillian explained.
“And each place is different.
“It depends on the particular landscape.”
She said their goal was to restore their land back to its original state.
“The Cobar peneplain was once a landscape of semi wooded, some forest, not a particular species, but it was largely forest landscape so that’s our goal.”
Jillian said they involved LLS in their plans to undertake the restoration work.
However, after starting the work clearing a drain, they were contacted by the ACF wanting copies of ecological studies and surveys they had done in relation to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity and Conservation (EPBC) Act which looks at things like making sure landholders are not impacting any ecologies and native shrubs and trees.
Jillian said they had been advised by LLS that they wouldn’t need to do any of the surveys and initially ignored the ACF’s request.
They were however later contacted by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) following a complaint being made against them.
Jillian said they were then assigned a case manager and a compliance officer and directed to stop all work. An ecologist team then conducted a visit to the property.
“We were lucky in that what our ecologist found, that it had not had a significant impact and we can move forward with works.
“And they’ve suggested that we lock up a big parcel of land to offset.
“Offsetting is something that is done with the PVP so they say, ‘yep you can manage this parcel of land but to do that you can lock up this bit of land’ which means that you can still graze it.
“It goes under a different licence and means that you can’t manage any growth.”
She said lots of other farmers in the area, were also being told to lock up their land.
Jillian said this has raised questions about the consistency of land management decisions.
She and husband Dom are among a growing number of property owners that are trying to manage the effects of native invasive species in their local landscape.
The pair recently attended a workshop where DCCEEW staff explained the new mapping system in relation to what they can and can’t do with their land. Jillian said they also attended to find out more about the EPBC Act.
At the workshop they met and spoke with Nick Savage, policy director with NSW Farmers, who has been hearing stories similar to theirs from lots of farmers in the Cobar and Nyngan areas.
Mr Savage said it appears the Federal Government is enforcing compliance standards under the EPBC Act, regardless of state approvals.
In an ABC Western Plains Radio interview last week, Mr Savage said one farmer in the Cobar area was told to lock up 8,000 hectares of land for 20 years and not use it at all, “no grazing, nothing”.
Mr Savage said there were changes made to the EPBC Act last year, and one of the key factors of those changes was to streamline approvals.
“But what we’re seeing is landowners, particularly in the Cobar, Nyngan area at the moment, that are engaging with Local Land Services, who are the approval authority for state legislation,” Mr Savage said.
“They’re jumping through all the hoops to get their approvals for things like treating invasive native species, which is not clearing, it’s to improve native vegetation.
“LLS officers are skilled, they’re knowledgeable in their area. They understand the plant community types and the soils, and they apply the law.
“What’s happening after that is that officers and bureaucrats from Canberra, in the federal environmental compliance agency, are coming in over the top of LLS, and making decisions saying that landowners must stop the clearing, and that there may be a could possibly be species or vegetation in that area that is not, that should be protected.
“There’s a complete lack of understanding of the impact these things have on farmers,” Mr Savage said.
