Controls on clearing native vegetation in South Australia toughened by included in Planning Act 1983
An aerial photograph taken southeast of Kimba on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula in 1959 showing drifting sandhills in paddocks clears of native vegtation. This evidence of soil erosion wasn't followed up due to lack of resources. Conservation pressure in the 1970s and 1980s brought a new era of land care to the state.
South Australia’s farming community was jolted in May 1983 when, without warning, the South Australian government introduced Planning Act regulations that “the clearance of any tree, shrub or plant of a species indigenous to South Australia would comprise development”.Clearing vegetation thus required South Australian Planning Commission approval.
With South Australia getting its first state government environment and conservation minister, Glen Broomhill, in 1971, the late 1970s saw widespread community agreement on the urgent need to conserve remaining uncleared native vegetation.
The government’s advisory committee on soil conservation, directly responsible for vegetation retention for 50 years, lost that role in 1983. The committee had seen controlling wholesale clearing of vegetation on private properties as important to conserving soil but had lobbied against the need for clearing roadside vegetation to be approved by the state minister in 1945. This wasn’t reversed until 1964 when the fauna and flora advisory committee formed an influential roadside vegetation subcommittee. This fed into strengthening land care relating to land clearance and enforcing it under state planning laws in 1983.
During the next two years after the new 1983 Planning Act regulations, more than 1,000 applications to clear native vegetation were submitted by landowners, fearing more restrictions would prevent developing farms. The applications were processed for the state planning commission by officers of the vegetation retention unit of the environment and planning department but the big backlog of applications, and absence of compensation to farmers refused permission to clear, caused widespread resentment.
After a legal challenge reached the high court of Australia, it was clear that, while the community supported preserving native vegetation, it couldn’t be achieved effectively without compensation. Compensation was arranged through extending heritage agreements including fencing and other financial incentives to manage native vegetation not approved for clearance.
The Native Vegetation Management Act 1985 removed clauses covering vegetation retention from the Soil Conservation Act but vegetation and soil care were now inevitably linked. Tree planting became the foundation of land care nurtured under the the state government's new Soil Conservation Council.
The native vegetation authority was set up, bringing a big shift in clearance approvals. With compensation now available, less than 4% of the areas applied for clearance were approved, where previously farmers were often given approval to clear up to half their areas. Environmentalists argued these steps were needed with increased salinity and that more than 640,000 hectares had been cleared in the previous decade.
To ease farmers’ pain, 764 heritage agreements covering 550,000 hectares were negotiated under the Act at a total cost of $73 million. This meant South Australia boasted the largest area of private land under long-term conservation in Australia. The Native Vegetation Act 1991 ended providing compensation but heritage agreements continued, with around 30 written per annum on a voluntary basis.
The 1991 Native Vegetation Act emphasised biodiversity and extended control of clearance to include scattered trees. In 2002, the Act was amended to formally end all broad-scale vegetation clearance across the state, although that had virtually been the case since the late 1980s. Some people were concerned tree clearance controls by the state environment department lacked community and landowner involvement that had been carefully nurtured, mainly through the soil conservation boards, the agricultural bureau movement and the agricultural extension programmes over the previous half century. The Native Vegetation Act 1991 recognised this and each clearance proposal required a comment from the soil conservation board covering the area to be cleared.