A globally significant savanna that supports an array of threatened species is being cleared for agriculture without any scrutiny under environmental laws, scientists say.

There’s rising alarm about the extent of unchecked land clearing in the Northern Territory’s tropical savannas, south of Darwin.

Conservationists used a webinar attended by federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on Wednesday to implore her to stop “rampant clearing” that’s putting an untold number of species at risk.

That includes in the territory’s savannas – one of the world’s last extensive, largely intact natural landscapes that support an extraordinary mix of plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world.

Many of them are threatened with extinction, including the Gouldian finch, the northern quoll and the critically endangered northern blue-tongued skink. Last month, the pig-nosed turtle was added to the list of concern.

But the minister has been told they are hanging on in the shadow of burgeoning land clearing, with permits now regularly approved in the territory for more than 3000 hectares at a time.

“We don’t think that’s happening anywhere else in the country in 2024,” Kirsty Howie from the Environment Centre of the Northern Territory told Ms Plibersek.

“New research has shown that since the year 2000, on average, every one of these massive clearing events has occurred over the mapped habitat of at least 12 federally-listed threatened species.”

Ecologists and conservation groups fear the biodiversity of the savannas is suffering a slow death by a thousand cuts as pastoralists ramp up clearing, without any meaningful oversight.

A recent report on the health of the savannas found over the past 20 years, more than 146,000ha of clearing has been approved by the territory’s Pastoral Lands Board without credible environment assessments.

That includes scrutiny under federal laws.

Euan Ritchie is a professor of wildlife ecology and Deakin University and co-authored the report.

He says the onus is on those who are applying to clear land to decide if they have an obligation to refer it for legal scrutiny.

“And that’s problematic, to say the least,” he’s told AAP.

He said there was limited data on the ecosystem’s threatened species and many have small ranges meaning a single clearing operation could have devastating consequences.

The Wilderness Society has released footage of recent agriculture-related clearing, filmed on the Sturt Plateau in July.

The conservation group says clearing approved by the Pastoral Lands Board has increased by more than 300 per cent since 2018, when a ban on growing cotton was lifted.

Environment Minister Kate Worden says the territory government is developing a strategy to identify the key drivers of biodiversity loss and identify actions to better safeguard nature.

If Labor wins the election later this month, consultation on that strategy will begin in September.

Ms Plibersek says her government’s promised nature reforms – including a rewrite of federal environment laws – will help address what’s happening in the territory.

She says those laws will clearly define unacceptable impacts but again refused to commit to introducing the full suite of promised reforms this term.

Tracey Ferrier
(Australian Associated Press)