Northern Territory
The Top End of the Northern Territory is one of Australia's most iconic and valuable landscapes. It's the home of big barramundi and crocodiles, vast uncleared grasslands and woodlands full of wildlife that has largely disappeared from southern Australia. It is a stronghold for Indigenous communities that maintain the world's oldest living culture, an important part of which is looking after Country.
The Top End is part of the world's largest intact tropical savanna grasslands and woodlands and features an amazing network of free-flowing tropical rivers that stretch right across Northern Australia. There is nowhere else like it on Earth.
But major land clearing is threatening to destroy these precious assets and inflict irreparable damage on the Territory's unique wildlife and lifestyle.
Land clearing in the Top End releases over one million tonnes of greenhouse gases every year at a time when Australians need to be reducing emissions. Land clearing also risks damaging priceless river catchments, such as the iconic Daly, Roper and Adelaide Rivers.
The Top End's vast savannas are still uncleared and healthy and should be managed as a giant carbon storehouse to help fight climate change. They should not be cleared in an unrealistic attempt to create the "foodbowl of Asia".
WWF believes it is time to draw a line in the sand on all major land clearing in the Territory. We need to learn from mistakes made elsewhere in Australia and around the world. Incremental land clearing under a "business as usual" scenario could devastate the Top End, just as over-clearing has devastated the Murray Darling Basin and South Western Australia.
Well regulated, small-scale clearing can have economic and social benefits without causing major environmental damage. WWF supports high value, low-impact developments - rather than major land clearing that causes significant carbon pollution but produces relatively few jobs.
The Territory's vast tropical savannas and rivers are wonderful economic assets that provide wealth and jobs to the people of the Top End. They are highly valued by fisherman, Indigenous communities, tourists and tourism businesses.
We need to support the aspirations of Indigenous traditional landowners in the Northern Territory for strong and prosperous communities, and for sustainably managing their country.
Take Action!
Find out what the Northern Territory Government must do and what you can do to help.
