Aug. 1, 2014, 4 a.m.

The state government has admitted it was aware there was tension surrounding illegal land clearing

THEY KNEW: Environment Minister Rob Stokes, pictured centre with department chief Terry Bailey, right, and local MP Kevin Anderson, left, said they were aware of the issues in the Croppa Creek area which has now seen all operations on the ground suspended after Tuesdays alleged murder. Photo: Gareth Gardner 310714GGA06

THE state government has admitted it was aware there was tension surrounding illegal land clearing in the Croppa Creek area before Tuesdays alleged shooting murder.

NSW Environment Minister Rob Stokes and Office of Environment and Heritage chief executive Terry Bailey flew into Tamworth yesterday morning to meet with grief-stricken family members and work colleagues of local compliance officer Glen Turner. The 51-year-old husband and father-of-two was on a reserve on Talga Ln, north of Moree, on Tuesday night when he was set upon and allegedly gunned down by local farmer Ian Robert Turnbull.

Mr Turner was allegedly shot in the back by the 79-year-old farmer, who is behind bars on one count of murder.

Local ecologist Phil Spark said he, along with other residents, had received no reply from the minister after highlighting the problems gripping the Croppa Creek area.

I raised it with the minister last month. We sent a letter to inform him of the whole history, and we told him of the issues, what was going on, he told The Leader.

Wed written to Robyn Parker stacks of times to no avail.

Mr Stokes wouldnt be drawn on the letter or any of the information he had received, and said he

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Minister admits he knew of tensions in lead-up to Croppa Creek shooting

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Koala in Bradbury on Sydney's south-western edge. Photo: Cambelltown Advertiser

Pressure is mounting on the Baird government to support the retention of key elements of anti land-clearing laws, with claims the Native Vegetation Act is sparing more than 100,000 native animals a year.

A report by WWF-Australia estimates land clearing for agriculture alone killed some 330,000 native animals a year on average between 1988 and 2005. That number dropped by 116,000 after the act came into force in 2005.

"The act is working, it's not broken," Martin Taylor, a WWF ecologist, said. "The only fixing it needs is that it should have a broader application."

Land-clearing restrictions should be extended to apply to all activities disturbing native habitat, such as infrastructure works, coal mining and urban sprawl, Dr Taylor said.

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The controls "should fall on everybody regardless of what the purpose" of land clearing is, he said.

The Sydney Basin, for instance, has some 1900 koalas under limited protection, with about 300 of the marsupials resident near Campbelltown one of the areas with rapid housing growth.

The Baird government is expected to announce plans to revise the existing land-clearing laws before the March 28 election. It is understood the Liberal-Nationals coalition will adopt many of the recommendations of an independent panel that reviewed the state's biodiversity legislation.

The panel's report, released late last year, called for the repeal of the native vegetation and threatened species acts, replacing them with a new biodiversity conservation law.

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NSW state election 2015: Extend native vegetation laws, WWF says

March 2, 2015, 5:14 p.m.

THERE are claims that NSW could encounter unprecedented levels of land clearing and threatened species will become extinct if the recommendations of a review of biodiversity legislation are adopted by the state government.

THERE are claims that NSW could encounter unprecedented levels of land clearing and threatened species will become extinct if the recommendations of a review of biodiversity legislation are adopted by the state government.

The Independent Biodiversity Legislation Review Panel handed down its final report in December.

It recommends repealing the Native Vegetation Act 2003, as well as repealing the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995, parts of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 Act and "reconstituting elements of them in a new Biodiversity Conservation Act".

Greens candidate for Kiama Terry Barratt said the report portrayed current biodiversity legislation as an impediment to agricultural and other types of development, rather than recognising that it was there to protect NSW's biodiversity.

Mr Barratt said the proposed approach was "radical".

Gerroa Environmental Protection Society secretary Howard Jones said current laws helped protect areas such as the Illawarra escarpment.

Mr Jones said the report acknowledged change could lead to a loss of biodiversity and that its approach was "risk-based".

Kiama MP Gareth Ward said the proposals would "modernise and simplify" biodiversity laws.

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Fears over review proposals

Land Clearing - MowCheaper Lawn Care
Going through trees and 4ft. high grass with a Gravely Compact Pro 34".

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Land Clearing - MowCheaper Lawn Care - Video

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC); also known as land change) is a general term for the human modification of Earth's terrestrial surface. Though humans have been modifying land to obtain food and other essentials for thousands of years, current rates, extents and intensities of LULCC are far greater than ever in history, driving unprecedented changes in ecosystems and environmental processes at local, regional and global scales. These changes encompass the greatest environmental concerns of human populations today, including climate change, biodiversity loss and the pollution of water, soils and air. Monitoring and mediating the negative consequences of LULCC while sustaining the production of essential resources has therefore become a major priority of researchers and policymakers around the world.

Land cover refers to the physical and biological cover over the surface of land, including water, vegetation, bare soil, and/or artificial structures. Land use is a more complicated term. Natural scientists define land use in terms of syndromes of human activities such as agriculture, forestry and building construction that alter land surface processes including biogeochemistry, hydrology and biodiversity. Social scientists and land managers define land use more broadly to include the social and economic purposes and contexts for and within which lands are managed (or left unmanaged), such as subsistence versus commercial agriculture, rented vs. owned, or private vs. public land. While land cover may be observed directly in the field or by remote sensing, observations of land use and its changes generally require the integration of natural and social scientific methods (expert knowledge, interviews with land managers) to determine which human activities are occurring in different parts of the landscape, even when land cover appears to be the same. For example, areas covered by woody vegetation may represent an undisturbed natural shrubland, a forest preserve recovering from a fire (use = conservation), regrowth following tree harvest (forestry), a plantation of immature rubber trees (plantation agriculture), swidden agriculture plots that are in between periods of clearing for annual crop production, or an irrigated tea plantation. As a result, scientific investigation of the causes and consequences of LULCC requires an interdisciplinary approach integrating both natural and social scientific methods, which has emerged as the new discipline of land-change science.

Changes in land use and land cover date to prehistory and are the direct and indirect consequence of human actions to secure essential resources. This may first have occurred with the burning of areas to enhance the availability of wild game and accelerated dramatically with the birth of agriculture, resulting in the extensive clearing (deforestation) and management of Earths terrestrial surface that continues today. More recently, industrialization has encouraged the concentration of human populations within urban areas (urbanization) and the depopulation of rural areas, accompanied by the intensification of agriculture in the most productive lands and the abandonment of marginal lands. All of these causes and their consequences are observable simultaneously around the world today.

Biodiversity is often reduced dramatically by LULCC. When land is transformed from a primary forest to a farm, the loss of forest species within deforested areas is immediate and complete. Even when unaccompanied by apparent changes in land cover, similar effects are observed whenever relatively undisturbed lands are transformed to more intensive uses, including livestock grazing, selective tree harvest and even fire prevention. The habitat suitability of forests and other ecosystems surrounding those under intensive use are also impacted by the fragmenting of existing habitat into smaller pieces (habitat fragmentation), which exposes forest edges to external influences and decreases core habitat area. Smaller habitat areas generally support fewer species (island biogeography), and for species requiring undisturbed core habitat, fragmentation can cause local and even general extinction. Research also demonstrates that species invasions by non-native plants, animals and diseases may occur more readily in areas exposed by LULCC, especially in proximity to human settlements.

LULCC plays a major role in climate change at global, regional and local scales. At global scale, LULCC is responsible for releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, thereby driving global warming. LULCC can increase the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by disturbance of terrestrial soils and vegetation, and the major driver of this change is deforestation, especially when followed by agriculture, which causes the further release of soil carbon in response to disturbance by tillage. Changes in land use and land cover are also behind major changes in terrestrial emissions of other greenhouse gases, especially methane (altered surface hydrology: wetland drainage and rice paddies; cattle grazing), and nitrous oxide (agriculture: input of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers; irrigation; cultivation of nitrogen fixing plants; biomass combustion).

Though LULCC certainly plays a critical role in greenhouse gas emissions, the complexity and dynamic interplay of land use processes favoring net accumulation versus net release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases makes it a poorly constrained component of our global budgets for these gases; an active area of current research. A further source of uncertainty in estimating the climate changes caused by LULCC is the release of sulfur dioxide and particulates by biomass combustion associated with agriculture, land clearing and human settlements. These emissions are believed to cause regional and global cooling by the reflection of sunlight from particulates and aerosols, and by their effects on cloud cover.

Land cover changes that alter the reflection of sunlight from land surfaces (albedo) are another major driver of global climate change. The precise contribution of this effect to global climate change remains a controversial but growing concern. The impact of albedo changes on regional and local climates is also an active area of research, especially changes in climate in response to changes in cover by dense vegetation and built structures. These changes alter surface heat balance not only by changing surface albedo, but also by altering evaporative heat transfer caused by evapotranspiration from vegetation (highest in closed canopy forest), and by changes in surface roughness, which alter heat transfer between the relatively stagnant layer of air at Earths surface (the boundary layer) and the troposphere. An example of this is the warmer temperatures observed within urban areas versus rural areas, known as the urban heat island effect.

Changes in land use and land cover are important drivers of water, soil and air pollution. Perhaps the oldest of these is land clearing for agriculture and the harvest of trees and other biomass. Vegetation removal leaves soils vulnerable to massive increases in soil erosion by wind and water, especially on steep terrain, and when accompanied by fire, also releases pollutants to the atmosphere. This not only degrades soil fertility over time, reducing the suitability of land for future agricultural use, but also releases huge quantities of phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediments to streams and other aquatic ecosystems, causing a variety of negative impacts (increased sedimentation, turbidity, eutrophication and coastal hypoxia). Mining can produce even greater impacts, including pollution by toxic metals exposed in the process. Modern agricultural practices, which include intensive inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers and the concentration of livestock and their manures within small areas, have substantially increased the pollution of surface water by runoff and erosion and the pollution of groundwater by leaching of excess nitrogen (as nitrate). Other agricultural chemicals, including herbicides and pesticides are also released to ground and surface waters by agriculture, and in some cases remain as contaminants in the soil. The burning of vegetation biomass to clear agricultural fields (crop residues, weeds) remains a potent contributor to regional air pollution wherever it occurs, and has now been banned in many areas.

Other environmental impacts of LULCC include the destruction of stratospheric ozone by nitrous oxide release from agricultural land and altered regional and local hydrology (dam construction, wetland drainage, irrigation projects, increased impervious surfaces in urban areas). Perhaps the most important issue for most of Earths human population is the long-term threat to future production of food and other essentials by the transformation of productive land to nonproductive uses, such as the conversion of agricultural land to residential use and the degradation of rangeland by overgrazing.

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Land-use and land-cover change - Encyclopedia of Earth

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TWI Columnist Lisa Haderlein

Change is hard. And, every change is for better or worse, depending upon your perspective. Change is particularly hard when it happens quickly. Im sorry, but telling me its easier if you just rip the bandage off quickly doesnt lessen the pain.

I have no doubt the 400 acres of trees and shrubs bulldozed and left burning in giant brush piles certainly looked worse to the hundreds of neighbors on the north side of Woodstock.

To the landowners, the end result of the land-clearing looked better after getting rid of the over-grown, unkempt nursery stock and opening the land up for row-crop farming. I have no doubt the phrase were making progress was used during the operation.

Thats right, 400 acres of nursery stock were bulldozed and burned north of Woodstock in recent weeks. Thousands of trees are gone forever. Some were quite mature decades old. The nursery had become a wildlife area in a way, with many birds and other critters finding homes there over the years. Now there is just open, bare ground.

The land will be farmed. Well, technically, the nursery was always a farm, so the land will still be farmed its just that a perennial crop of trees and shrubs that were harvested over the years based on the publics desire for landscape material is being replaced with an annual crop that will likely rotate between corn and soybeans.

Nothing to see here was more-or-less the official response from the county officials I contacted. It is farmland, and state law gives farmers a lot of latitude in managing their land. The owners have all their permits. They are following all the proper regulations. There is no law that says a farmer has to tell anyone about his plans to change crops.

The city of Woodstock had no notice either. The land is in the countys jurisdiction, and the affected neighbors live in the city.

The neighbors knew the nursery was private land. Some even remember when the nursery actively managed the trees and shrubs before the housing crash. They just never imagined that new owners could bulldoze thousands of trees and shrubs and burn them in giant piles, day and night, without telling the neighbors.

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Burning Acres of Trees North of Woodstck? There Must be a Better Way

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WESTERN Australian farmers are trying to repeal a controversial environmental law that they argue is destroying the value of thousands of properties.

Farmer and former state Liberal member Murray Nixon told a state parliamentary committee on Wednesday that many farmers were unaware that they were legally prevented from grazing livestock on designated sensitive areas given the classification system was snuck into legislation without adequate consultation.

"It snuck through without any debate at all," Mr Nixon said.

"You all know nobody reads the government gazette. At least it could have gone to the rural press."

The legislation was introduced in 2005 by the then Labor state government to protect wetlands in farming regions. The designated "environmentally sensitive areas" were compiled through aerial photography.

However, few out of the 3000 to 4000 affected property owners either knew their land was now subject to the new clearing restrictions or that the act of grazing was considered to be clearing under the terms of the legislation.

The legislation went largely unnoticed until Manjimup farmer Peter Swift was charged in 2009 with illegally clearing parts of his land. He won the court proceedings, but he says the deterioration in his health suffered during the intense litigation and subsequent work difficulties has meant he is now facing foreclosure.

"I've worked over 30 years on my little piece of Australia," Mr Swift said.

"I've done nothing wrong and now the bank is holding a Colt 45 to my head. I'm telling you nobody is coming through my front gate."

The Department of Environment Regulation has defended the consultation process by arguing that 17 associations and industry bodies, including at least two farming groups, were consulted prior to the 2005 legislative change.

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WA farmers buck land laws

Pitkin County commissioners unanimously approved six agriculture leases for the Glassier Open Space property on Wednesday, clearing the way for local operators to tend to the land, graze cattle, and grow hay, flowers and fruit trees.

The leases will be for five to 10 years in duration, allowing the operators more time to grow their respective businesses and cultivate relationships with adjacent lessees.

Among concerns by the commissioners were bear-proofing for the fruit trees; ensuring that the produce is sold locally; the location of potential horse trailer parking; and noxious weed mitigation.

Paul Holsinger, county open space and trails land officer, said theyve been talking with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and that substantial fencing was planned for the fruit trees.

He added that the goal of the operators was to offer produce locally, and a requirement of the leases was that all operators must be located within 45 miles of the property.

Holsinger said that weed mitigation is being addressed sheep have been utilized on one parcel to eat the unwanted plants in the past.

Holsinger deferred to Gary Tennenbaum, OST assistant director, on horse trailer parking.

Tennenbaum said that options were being looked at near the historic Glassier House, as well as down the road on property owned by the Carricarte Family.

The reality is that we can come up with a solution, he said. Once we get the lessees on board, we can set up a site visit in late April, and really go out there and say, what is going to work and whats not?

Change of heart for OST board

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PitCo commissioners approve Glassier leases