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Community service and hefty fine for clearing threatened species

Media release: 30 October 2009

Mr Lance Rawson, of Chillingham, near Bilambil Heights, was convicted of seven charges and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service, pay fines totalling $135 000 as well as professional costs by the Land and Environment Court this week (28/10) after he pleaded guilty to destroying more than a thousand threatened plants on land at Bilambil Heights, Terranora, north of Murwillumbah, on the NSW-Queensland border.

The land is presently part of the proposed site of a large residential development known as 'The Rise'.

Mr Rawson was contracted by Godfrey Mantle/Terranora Group Mgt Pty Ltd, the owner of the land, to poison camphor laurel and privet. The Court heard evidence that Terranora Group Mgt Pty Ltd also engaged environmental consultants to complete a flora and fauna surveys for a proposed residential development.

During the surveys the consultants identified hundreds of individual threatened species on the land and marked many of these trees with pink flagging tape. When the consultants later returned to the land they discovered that many threatened trees, including many marked with pink flagging tape, had been cut and poisoned.

The Court found that Mr Rawson cut down and poisoned 1279 trees, of seven different threatened species, between December 2005 and September 2006 as part of land clearing works intended to improve the pasture and productivity of the property for cattle grazing.

While the Court was not satisfied that Mr Rawson knew that the trees he cut and poisoned were threatened species, the Court did find that Mr Rawson’s actions were deliberate and that he acted in reckless disregard of information, advice and warnings from one of the environmental consultants that at least some of the trees he had cut were threatened species, as well as warnings from a Tweed Shire Council Officer that the cutting of trees on the property may be contrary to the law.

In his judgement Chief Judge Preston said: "The conservation of biological diversity is a common concern of humankind. Mr Rawson’s offending conduct caused actual environmental harm to seven threatened species and populations of those threatened species and an endangered ecological community; their habitat; and their composition, structure and functioning. Such environmental harm affects the intrinsic and instrumental values of biological diversity."

Restoration works on community land, including planting of trees, will be a component of the community services works the Court has ordered Mr Rawson to do.

DECCW Director-General Lisa Corbyn said the Court’s decision sent a clear message to those involved in land clearing works that the community expects NSW environmental protection laws to be upheld.

"The judgement confirms that people must take positive steps to ensure they inform themselves about what is protected under the State’s environmental laws before undertaking works, otherwise they risk prosecution and serious penalties," Ms Corbyn said.

Contact: Lawrence Orel