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Native Vegetation Compliance and Enforcement Strategy

The Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) is charged with promoting compliance with native vegetation legislation to achieve better environmental outcomes in accordance with the performance target for native vegetation management in the NSW Government's State Plan - A New Direction for NSW. A key component of native vegetation management is compliance with the Native Vegetation Act 2003 and OEH's role in its regulation.

The Native Vegetation Compliance and Enforcement Strategy (09465nvcestrategy.pdf; 113KB) has been developed to assist the community in understanding the principles and approaches OEH uses when undertaking compliance and enforcement activities under native vegetation legislation. Effective stakeholder engagement, strategic investigations, appropriate enforcement actions and targeted compliance campaigns are all key components of OEH's regulation of native vegetation.

OEH is responsible for implementing a credible compliance and enforcement framework for native vegetation to ensure that landholders who comply with the law are not disadvantaged. This compliance and enforcement framework is 'risk-based' and provides OEH with a cost-effective approach to monitoring compliance, enabling investigation of the highest priority regulatory risks and proactive response to changing or emerging risks.

OEH will actively promote compliance with native vegetation legislation by assisting the community to understand and meet their legislative obligations, and compelling compliance with strong, consistent regulatory action targeting those who deliberately choose not to comply with the law. OEH actively monitors compliance using the latest technology and by encouraging the public to report potentially illegal activities.

The community, industry, landholders, contractors, interest groups, CMAs and government agencies all have an important role in delivering better outcomes for native vegetation by promoting compliance with legislation and by identifying and reporting possible environmental problems and illegal clearing.

• Find out how to help stop illegal native vegetation clearing or report environmental problems.
• Learn more about OEH's achievements in managing native vegetation - download the NSW Annual Report on Native Vegetation 2008 (09523arnv08.pdf; 1.4MB).