{"id":862188,"date":"2026-08-20T16:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/862188\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T16:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:22:14","slug":"test-of-nature-law-standards-is-major-curb-on-deforestation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/862188\/","title":{"rendered":"Test of nature law standards is major curb on deforestation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SYDNEY, Thursday 20 August 2026 \u2014 Commenting on the release of the government\u2019s final <a class=\"external-link\" title=\"This link will lead you to minister.dcceew.gov.au\" href=\"https:\/\/minister.dcceew.gov.au\/watt\/media-releases\/first-national-environmental-standards-set-amid-ongoing-epbc-reform\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nature law standards<\/a> made today, including for Matters of National Environmental Significance, the following lines can be attributed to Glenn Walker, Head of Nature at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cUltimately the test of the new nature law standards will be whether they materially bring down Australia\u2019s shockingly high rates of deforestation caused by bulldozing for beef and logging of native forests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDeforestation severely threatens the forest homes of some of Australia\u2019s most threatened species including the koala, greater glider and swift parrot. In Queensland the bulldozing of forests is causing mass erosion and the run off of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of muddy soil on the Great Barrier Reef each year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cUnless these standards deliver protection for the Great Barrier Reef from deforestation runoff and ensure the healthy recovery of wildlife under threat then they will have failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere\u2019s clear improvement on the draft standards that were released, which we welcome, but what we have today still falls well short of what would be optimal. In particular, the heavy reliance on offsets and the failure to address the cumulative impacts of hundreds of instances of deforestation\u2013death by a thousand cuts\u2013create serious ongoing weaknesses in the way the standards work. The acid test will now be in the operation: will the standards succeed in stopping deforestation, or not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe effectiveness of the nature law reforms hang heavily on these standards. We will be watching closely as they are implemented and raising the alarm on any failure to curb deforestation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">-ENDS-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, Thursday 20 August 2026 \u2014 Commenting on the release of the government\u2019s final nature law standards made&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":862189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-862188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}