Dr Lachlan McCaw AFSM, 14 March 2025

Federal environmental approval recently granted for expansion of the South 32 Worsley bauxite mine has given the green light to clearing of a further 3855 hectares of native forest around Boddington south-east of Perth. Mine clearing will predominantly impact public forest in a landscape where native vegetation is already heavily fragmented due to past agricultural clearing and mining.

These forests are known to provide important habitat for eight threatened fauna species including woylie, numbat, chuditch, western ringtail possum and quokka, along with three species of forest-dwelling cockatoos. Other conservation dependent fauna and threatened plants occur within the area to be affected by mining.

Cumulative impacts from the Worsley mine expansion are in direct conflict with the vision and goals for management of public forest land articulated in the Forest Management Plan 2024-2033.  This plan is intended to prioritise forest health and biodiversity of public forests and to manage forests to maintain or enhance carbon storage and improve climate resilience.  In September 2021 the Western Australian Labour government announced the end of commercial timber harvesting in native forest and has since spent $80 million of public funds on transition measures to support affected workers and communities.

Mine expansion takes place against a background where the Western Australian Environment Protection Authority acknowledged that clearing of vegetation within the northern jarrah forest will accelerate over the next 20 years. Experience shows the rate of clearing for mining has increased at a rate greater than that of subsequent post-mining rehabilitation.

In assessing the Worsley mine expansion the Environment Protection Authority recommended a series of conditions be imposed including protection of private land as conservation offsets, limits to the number of cockatoo nesting trees cleared for mining, and measures to limit and offset emission of greenhouse gases from clearing, mining and ore processing. Following an appeals process the Western Australian Minister for Environment chose to relax a number of conditions placed on South 32 allowing increased clearing of public native forest and removing any conditions on greenhouse gas emissions. Federal approval under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is subject to conditions substantively consistent with State requirements.

Given this background the commitment of the Western Australian government to managing native forests to conserve biodiversity and improve climate resilience must be questioned. Bauxite mining requires complete clearing of all vegetation and the removal of a substantial part of the deeply weathered soil profile. Important habitat elements such as large decayed ground logs and old trees containing hollows suitable for cockatoo nesting are lost completely from mined landscapes and will take much longer than a century to re-establish. These impacts far exceed any temporary loss of habitat resulting from timber harvesting.

Bauxite mining is an important industry for the Western Australian economy and provides a metal increasingly in demand for the transition to renewable energy. However, the community should question how much bauxite mining is enough, and whether closure of the native forest timber industry is simply a convenient smokescreen for increased mining in the jarrah forest.

Dr Lachlan McCaw AFSM is a forest scientist with more than four decades experience studying and working in the forests of south-west Western Australia.

See also: bauxite; jarrah forest