Test of nature law standards is major curb on deforestation

Greenpeace Australia Pacific Media Release

SYDNEY, Thursday 20 August 2026 – Commenting on the release of the government’s final nature law standards 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:

“Ultimately the test of the new nature law standards will be whether they materially bring down Australia’s shockingly high rates of deforestation caused by bulldozing for beef and logging of native forests.

“Deforestation severely threatens the forest homes of some of Australia’s 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.

“Unless 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.

“There’s 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–death by a thousand cuts–create 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.

“The 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.”