Farmers are clearing land six times faster than detected by the NSW government, and most offsets used to compensate for vegetation destruction merely preserve existing conservation areas, according to unpublished research by Philip Gibbons, a leading biodiversity expert. The results are "a bombshell", the NSW Nature Conservation Council said, and come as the government prepares to release its new biodiversity conservation bill for public comment as soon as Tuesday. The findings are based satellite data, which picked up the clearing of 81,000 hectares of land in the state from 2007-2011. By comparison, the Office of Environment and Heritage approved just 12,480...
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