Will Queensland embrace the future or stick with its shocking land clearing past?

If a tree falls in the Queensland outback during an election, does any voter care? If you happen to be a besieged koala, you’d definitely hope so.

Land clearing in Wombinoo in Queensland, Australia. The aftermath
of land clearing in 2016 triggered intervention from the federal government. 

With the Queensland election upon us, it has become clear that the rights and wrongs of clearing Queensland’s forests and woodlands have been a polarising issue with all major players releasing dramatically different policies.

The scene was set for this debate when, only weeks before the election, shocking new independent data was released that showed that 400,000 hectares of bush were cleared in Queensland during the year 2015–16.

This is the equivalent to a Gabba cricket pitch-sized area of forest cleared every three minutes every day, all year. Experts from WWF Australia have estimated that 45 million animals were killed as a result of the clearing in 2015through 2016 alone.

Read the opinion piece on The Guardian by Lyndon Schneiders - “Will Queensland embrace the future or stick with its shocking land clearing past?”