Media release – Environment Centre NT and Environmental Justice Australia
Australia’s environment minister is being taken to court to protect the great northern savanna from being bulldozed for industrial agriculture.
In February, Environment Minister Murray Watt decided not to assess Top End Pastoral company’s plans to bulldoze 2722 hectares of savanna (an area almost 10 times the size of Sydney’s CBD) on the banks of the iconic Daly River, north of Katherine.
Australia’s great northern savanna covers a third of the country and is the largest intact savanna ecosystem remaining on earth. With woodland stretching as far as the eye can see, ancient rivers feeding into vast floodplains thriving with life – nature is in abundance here, and is unlike anywhere else in the country.
More than 20 threatened species call Claravale home, and bulldozing here could destroy habitat for ghost bats, freshwater sawfish, rainbow-coloured Gouldian finches and the red goshawk, Australia’s rarest bird of prey.
Environment Centre NT, with its lawyers at Environmental Justice Australia, is fighting back and challenging the decision in the Federal Court.
Environment Centre NT is seeking a judicial review of the Minister’s decision not to assess the land clearing at Claravale and will rely on two main arguments:
- The Minister should have rejected the referral because it is only one stage of a three staged clearing project, which could see almost 6000 hectares of savanna cleared in total.
- The Minister failed to properly consider the precautionary principle – a key principle in Australian environmental law, including due to his failure to consider impacts on certain threatened species including the iconic freshwater sawfish.
The owners of Claravale Farm and Station, Top End Pastoral Company, were only the second pastoral station in the Northern Territory to seek Federal Assessment of their deforestation plans (following AAM Investment Group’s referral at Spirit Hills Station in August 2025).
In early 2023, it was revealed that the owners of Claravale Farm had bulldozed land without appropriate permits in 2021. A landmark prosecution of Top End Pastoral company for unlawful clearing was recently dropped, despite an admission that the clearing occurred without relevant approvals.
The Northern Territory is the only jurisdiction in Australia with no specific native vegetation laws and no overarching biodiversity conservation strategy to protect the world’s largest intact tropical savanna, which experts say is on a path towards collapse due to fracking, mining and industrial agriculture like cotton.
Analysis by Environment Centre NT shows the Finocchiaro Government approved the destruction of almost 35,000 hectares of native vegetation in 2025 – equivalent to more than 17,000 MCG playing fields - none of which crossed the Federal Environment Minister’s desk.
Environment Centre NT Executive Director, Dr Kirsty Howey said:
“We believe Australia’s Environment Minister failed to do his job when he greenlit a massive deforestation proposal on land that’s home to threatened species like Gouldian finches, red goshawks, freshwater sawfish and ghost bats.”
“We’re facing a deforestation crisis here in the Territory, with the bulldozers rolling in on the world’s last intact tropical savanna, while the federal government looks away. If protection depends on a postcode, the law isn’t working.”
“The Territory is home to some of Australia’s best nature – iconic cycads, sweeping savanna woodlands, turquoise hot springs and a diversity of birdlife not seen anywhere else in Australia, but for too long, the NT has been a lawless place when it comes to environmental protection.”
Environmental Justice Australia Senior Lawyer Nicola Silbert said:
“Our client will argue that the Environment Minister made key legal errors when he refused to assess these plans to clear almost 3,000 hectares of tropical savanna.”
“Our client will argue that the decision did not properly address past and future clearing at Claravale, and that it did not take into account the precautionary principle – a key principle in Australian environmental law.”
“Given the scale of the bulldozing and the risks to threatened wildlife in this biodiversity hotspot, this case raises serious questions about whether Australia’s nature laws are being properly applied.”
Media contact
- Environment Centre NT – Jem Wilson [email protected] or 0481 959 745
- Environmental Justice Australia – Jessa Latona [email protected] or 03 8341 3110.
