Nature in Australia is in serious trouble. Despite being one of only 17 mega-diverse nations on earth and home to some of the most unique and remarkable plants and animals on the planet, Australia is in the midst of an extinction crisis.

The 2021 Australia: State of the Environment report found that the overall condition of Australia’s natural environment was poor and that the trend is deteriorating.

In December 2021, the Queensland Government’s Statewide Land and Tree Study (SLATS) released the most recent detections of forest and woodland destruction for 2018-19 using a new and more accurate methodology.

This report analyses the 2018-19 SLATS data to quantify destruction of forested habitats for threatened species and threatened ecological communities listed as Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) under Australia’s national environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).

This report tries to identify how much forest habitat destruction in Queensland in 2018-19 was referred, and how much was not, and the industries responsible.

Key findings:

• 100 animal species, 126 plant species and 11 threatened ecological communities had at least one hectare of likely habitat destroyed.
• There is no public record of any enforcement action taken against unreferred destruction of MNES for pasture expansion in Queensland.
• In 2018-19 alone, thousands of prima facie breaches of the EPBC Act may have occurred that should have been investigated by the regulator.