Federal response to State of Environment report concerns land managers

The announcement was part of the Albanese government's response to the release of the State of the Environment Report last week, which found Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent, among other things.

PRA spokesman Dale Stiller described the report as written with a black armband view of the world, saying that the first thing to note about it was that it covered a five-year period of severe drought throughout the country.

"Of course there was a downturn in a lot of environmental measures in that period," he said.

In contrast, the Australian National University's 2021 report on Australia's environment offers a much more positive outlook, Mr Stiller said.

"If you evaluated your farm during drought years it would fall short by quite a few measurements," he said.

"Add water & it magically jumps into life.

"The SoE report is over a five-year dry period while a completely different outcome is found in the ANU report looking at 2021 only."

Within that, mulga lands have a summary score of 6.9 out of 10, a 1 unit improvement from 2020.

Mr Stiller said no-one in rural Australia begrudged national parks, they just wanted them to be looked after better.

"We feel governments aren't adequately looking after what we've got," he said. "And 30pc isn't scientific either - it's more of the lock up and leave it approach."

Another questioning the basis of the report is new PRA vice president Rob Atkinson, who said he didn't want to comment before understanding how its conclusions were arrived at.

"Who determines what state the Australian environment is at," he asked. "The first thing I want to know is whether it takes into account the drought conditions going on at the time."

Mr Atkinson began a social media page, Queensland National Park Watch soon after moving from Hughenden to Goomeri four years ago, after being told by a local landholder that he feared burning off because of the risk of fire getting away in a nearby national park.

"I went and looked for myself - there was so much fuel and it was so old, animals won't eat that," he said.

"I formed the group - it's got 1300 members now.

"We're not against national parks, we just want to see them managed."

Bundaberg's Tom Marland commented on his blog that he was the first to agree that more needed to be done to protect the Australian environment but said nothing would be achieved by allowing ideology and politics to override fact-based science, economics and common sense.

Saying the 30pc national park target was in line with United Nations targets to protect at least 30pc of the planet, he said the country already had 3,500,000ha of land as national park, which was a bit larger than Italy's landmass.

"Australia already has the second largest amount of area protected as national parks in the world behind Canada - which is mainly frozen," he said.

Both he and Mr Stiller feared the doom and gloom report would be used as a justification for more federal regulation.

"The problem with the alarmist approach is that it provides a push for activists to change policies, and that often harms agriculture," Mr Stiller said. "The fear is that it will be detrimental to farming and benefit the environment in name only."

He said Australia's land managers would be faced with a situation of double jeopardy, whereby they would have to face increased national regulations after jumping through state hoops.

"It's our great worry that the minister will use the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and the Environmental Protection Agency to implement greater controls and strangle all development," he said.

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