Biodiversity thrown under the bus

 

Blasting ridge-top forests, Mt Emerald wind farm - pic Steven Nowakowski

The following is the transcript of my feature in the current edition of The Weekend Australian newspaper (28-29/02/2026) about the environmental consequences of the rushed rollout of renewables to meet the net zero by 2050 target. It is followed by a break-out on Borumba Hydro project. The news story in the same edition can be found at this link.

The sun rises over green-grey woodland enveloping the biggest wind farm in the southern hemisphere (and Australia) on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range in south Queensland. Dozens of vehicles roar past at speed in the early morning light, transporting workers and contractors to the MacIntyre Wind Precinct from their accommodation in the town of Warwick, 50 kilometres to the east.

In the motorcade's wake, the carcasses of freshly mown down native mammals litter five kilometres of sealed road linking the Cunningham Highway to the wind farm entrance. A black-striped wallaby lies in the middle of the road; a joey in its pouch is also dead. A flattened echidna is a mess of crushed quills. A rufous bettong lies near a sign warning drivers to take care because koalas cross the road. Close by is another black-striped wallaby, a young male.

Black-striped Wallaby run down by MacIntyre work vehicle

Drivers don't slow down. Later in the morning, the carcasses are removed. If this happens every morning and the wildlife toll also rises along the highway from Warwick, as seems likely, the carnage overall might be substantial.

Welcome to the Green Revolution as Australia rushes towards its goal of net zero emissions by 2050. A small Cairns-based conservation group, Rainforest Reserves Australia, is highlighting the environmental consequences of scores of renewables it is monitoring, with projects impacting tens of thousands of hectares of native forest and woodland of high biodiversity value.

Native woodland - MacIntyre Wind Precinct

A decade ago, many of these projects would have met fierce opposition from environmentalists and the Greens party. Today their leaders are silent, believing that the climate change challenge is of such urgency that effectively, anything else is insignificant. Species extinctions and loss of biodiversity, habitat and scenic amenity? Not so much high priority these days. Those questioning the merits of renewables are demonised and accused of being in the pocket of fossil fuel and nuclear power industries.

The Clean Energy Council's investment report for the last quarter of 2025 revealed nine large generation projects were commissioned with a total capacity of 2.1 gigawatts - more than the previous six quarters combined - while five more projects worth $3.5 billion reached financial close. RRA has compiled a register of 1,237 proposed and operating projects – wind farm, solar farm, battery storage and hydro projects –nationwide. Says RRA vice-president Steven Nowakowski. “A new project pops up somewhere about once a week, then another in the same area three months later, and eventually many are essentially connected to each over. It's happening so fast it's hard to keep track of them.”

MacIntyre Wind Farm 

RRA is now being joined by respected ecologists and natural history scientists in sounding alarm bells. Little thought or planning is put into sites for renewables as the net zero push trumps other considerations, they say. The welcome mat is out for almost any company putting its hand up to develop a project wherever it wants. Federal and state environmental safeguards are of little consequence. Whether or not you believe Australia makes a meaningful contribution to reducing global warming by cutting emissions, net zero comes with a high and largely avoidable ecological price.

Dubbed Big Mac and operated by Spanish renewables behemoth ACCIONA Energia, MacIntyre is in the process of commissioning 162 fibreglass turbines, each 230 metres tall. The project size will be doubled by the planned 120-turbine Herries Range farm and 18-turbine Karara farm - and a battery energy storage system - across 36,000 hectares of largely well-vegetated land that is home to a wealth of threatened wildlife. Along a 12 kilometre drive through Big Mac, rows of turbines stretch to the horizon in every direction, with most positioned in prime woodland habitat.

MacIntyre Wind Farm (above and below)

Forest glades in the Big Mac footprint are frequented by the beautiful and rare turquoise parrot. Two critically endangered species – the swift parrot and regent honeyeater – migrate in winter from southern states to the adjoining Durikai State Forest. Their flight paths now pass through turbines in woodlands which were once widespread in south-east Australia, but the habitat has been reduced to remnant patches by intensive farming and other development.

Turquoise Parrot

Wind farm turbines overseas take a heavy toll of birds and bats colliding with rotating blades. Big Mac's Bird and Bat Adaptive Management Plan requires monthly reports of the results of carcass searches by consultants to be provided to project operators. Federal and state governments are informed if a threatened species is found dead or injured.

What happens then is... not much, it seems. Asked by Inquire to reveal details of wildlife casualties from turbines, a MacIntyre spokesperson says there is no federal government requirement for it to make the information public. So it won't. Federal environment minister Murray Watt declined to respond to questions about the wildlife casualties of wind farms. As for wildlife road victims, the company says speed limits on public roads are a matter for state and local authorities. Maybe asking staff to slow down anyway in the early mornings when animals are out and about feeding? No comment.

Regent Honeyeater

Rose Unwins and partner Lindy Bennett moved from Victoria's Gippsland in 2012 in part, says Bennett, to “get away from wind farms”. After acquiring a bushland property in the quiet backwater of Greymare, they were stunned to learn two years ago that Big Mac would be among their neighbours. Says Unwin: “We woke up late one night to the sound of huge trucks roaring past transporting equipment. So a gigantic wind farm goes up in our back yard with zero consultation. We would not have moved here if we'd known.”

Rose Unwins & Lindy Bennett

Further north, Millmerran farmer Kim Stevens can see Big Mac's tall turbines from her property 45 kilometres away. Soon she will have turbines across the road from her farm. “In this region we've got eight wind farms and two solar farms on the go. They're all over the place. We have a deeply divided community, with some people taking up their offer to place turbines on their property (reported to be $40,000 per year per turbine) and others who won't.”

Many properties have signs, No Wind or Solar Here, on fences. Her 82-year-old parents rejected offers by the Wambo Wind Farm near Jondaryn, 140 kilometres to the north, to operate turbines on their property: Says Stevens: “Their neighbours accepted. Now my parents wake up every morning with these monstrosities on three sides of their home. What can they do? Their property is worthless.”

Steve Wakerley

Kooroongarra grazier Steve Wakerley was horrified when 64 kilometres of transmitter tower corridor were cut through woodland to connect Big Mac to the existing Powerlink transmission line to Millmerran's coal-fired station, where the wind farm's power will feed into the grid. Wakerley says:“They put it straight through the best koala habitat, knocking down big old trees. If farmers did that, we'd be jumped on. These are all overseas companies making countless millions.”

Transmission lines to MacIntyre Wind Farm

Anthony Albanese singled out the MacIntyre Wind Precinct and the Borumba Hydro scheme in the Sunshine Coast hinterland (see story below) for praise in a 2024 address to the Queensland Media Club, saying they had the “right skills, supply chains and processes to get projects up and going”.

A spokesperson for ACCIONA says the company is “proud to be a leader in sustainability and is committed to developing its projects to respect local biodiversity and the environment”. An annual report would be published in accordance with federal guidelines detailing compliance with management plans. The company had engaged extensively with the local community for six years: “We understand communities expect to experience the benefits of hosting renewable energy developments and ACCIONA works hard to create local jobs and opportunities, while also delivering a dedicated program of community benefits.”

Farm fence sign near Millmerran

Queensland is Ground Zero for what is shaping up as a new environmental battlefield as concerns about sites developed for the renewables push mount. RRA mapping shows a concentration of wind farms the length and breadth of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, from high ridges to undulating foothills. The sites are largely clustered in areas identified as being of high biodiversity in recently released federal environment department mapping.

University of Queensland ecology professor and Biodiversity Council co-chair Hugh Possingham says land-clearing for renewables is boosting carbon dioxide emissions, “making climate change worse”. Montane wind farms are of particular concern: “The highest concentrations of birds and mammals are in the mountains where these projects are. Areas of high value for biodversity are being impacted and they should not be impacted.”

Possingham says governments have no excuse: “We had a good idea this was coming 15 years ago. State and federal governments were told this would be big and they needed to get on top of it. They were warned but they failed to put proper planning processes in place. As a result, governments have not had the necessary expertise and many mistakes are being made.”

Queensland renewables map - Steven NNowakowski

Former Queensland Government Principal Botanist Jeanette Kemp estimated in 2024 that 29,000 hectares of native vegetation would be cleared for wind farms in Queensland with another 85,000 hectares degraded by weed invasion, erosion and other impacts. Kemp says those figures are higher today as the project volume accelerates: “Laws like the state Vegetation Management Act are not being applied in ways they should be. The proponents get the go-ahead rapidly with everything fast-tracked. The last bits of undisturbed habitat are often in areas where projects are going ahead.”

Kemp has documented the likely consequences for many endangered ecosystems: for instance, 30 per cent of what is left of the bloodwood/swampbox-on-basalt ecosystem is within the clearing zone of the Mt Fox Energy Park near Ingham in north Queensland. “The general public has no idea of the enormity of what's going on out there with renewables because nobody is telling them. If they knew, things would be very different.”

Clearing for Clarke Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

North-west of Rockhampton in central Queensland, Squadron Energy, owned by iron more magnate Andrew Forrest, is developing the Clarke Creek Wind Farm with the placement of 100 turbines completed and another 88 planned. The project's biodiversity management plan indicates the loss of up to 1,513 hectares of koala habitat.

Koalas at Lotus Creek - StevenNowakowski

The Clarke Creek environmental impact statement raised eyebrows with the observation that koalas injured during clearing might be finished off with a “hard, sharp blow to the base of the back of the skull with a blunt metal or heavy wooden bar". Yet the company pledged that “no animal or threatened species is harmed as a result of project activity”; how this is guaranteed is unclear.

Clarke Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

Further north, inland from St Lawrence, then federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek in 2022 approved Ark Energy's 46-turbine Lotus Creek Wind farm (now under construction and being operated by Vestas) which had been rejected by her predecessor, the Liberals' Sussan Ley. Within the site boundary at the time, 101 koalas were recorded during surveys, with the threatened greater glider located at 131 sites.

Says the RRA's Steve Nowakowski: “This is a place of wild beauty. Koalas, greater gliders, rufous bettongs, wedge-tailed eagles... they're always there. It will all go. The mountain tops are all being removed. They're dynamiting everywhere.” A recent video filmed from a drone shows a hilltop ridge at Lotus Creek being flattened by explosives for a turbine pad. Another video shows extensive areas of hilltop native vegetation being blown up by Ratch Australia's 53-turbine Mt Emerald wind farm - in one of the few remaining areas where the threatened northern quoll survives.

Clearing for Lotus Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

A lesson in flawed decision-making in addressing environmental dilemmas can be seen with DP Green Energy's 70-turbine Callide Wind Farm, west of Gladstone. The federal environment department approved the clearing of 340 hectares of greater glider habitat, 900 hectares of koala habitat, and 407 hectares of habitat frequented by an endangered legless lizard, the collared delma. To minimise harm to gliders, the developers are required to identify roosting hollows used by the animals prior to clearing and relocate them. How they are to relocate hollows high in the trees without killing the inhabitants is not explained.

Clearing for Lotus Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

Death from striking turbine blades whipping around at 350kph is a major concern. Nowakowski says he has found between one and five dead birds and bats under every turbine at the Kaban Wind Farm near Ravenshoe in north Queensland – operated by the French company Neon - during early morning forays. He has been warned by police he faces trespass charges if the visits continue.

Greater Glider - Steven Nowakowski

Confidential bird and bat collision reports by wind farms rarely surface publicly, but one leaked from the Mt Emerald farm showed that in 2021, 168 bat carcasses were found under 53 turbines – including 105 northern freetail bats and an endangered spectacled flying-fox – along with 28 dead birds, including 4 wedge-tailed eagles. Many more victims would have been overlooked during surveys, removed by predators before surveys, or died later from injuries.

Dead Yellow-bellied Sheathtail Bat - Kaban Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

If that kind of mortality reflects what is happening with thousands of turbines operating around the country, the death toll would be considerable, but since the information is not available publicly, nobody knows. Tasmania's planned Robbins Island Wind Farm, despite a good deal of hang-wringing, remains smack in the middle of the migration flight path of the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot, with fewer than 100 birds surviving in the wild. An unknown number of endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles have been killed or injured by wind farms.

Kaban Wind Farm - dead Pacific Swift, White-striped Mastiff-Bat, Northern Freetail Bat - Steven Nowakowski

Korea Zinc's 47-turbine St Patricks Plains Wind Farm in the central Tasmanian highlands was approved before Christmas by the federal government. Canberra's green light allows the operators to kill an extraordinary 132,426 birds and 69,480 bats over 63 years from when it begins operating. These include three migratory bird species protected under international treaties requiring Australia to protect them; two of these – the curlew sandpiper and far eastern curlew – are critically endangered.

Tasmanian woodland birds whose populations are in decline are in the firing line: 1,350 strong-billed honeyeaters and 360 dusky robins, among many others, can be killed each year. If the number of fatalities of a threatened species reaches a set “trigger” level over a 12-month period, the federal environment environment minister can simply raise the level. Meanwhile, 481 hectares of potential denning habitat for the Tasmanian devil – the wild population of which is struggling to overcome the depredations of facial tumour disease - can be bulldozed.

Dead Little Red Flying-Fox - Steven Nowakowski

A 2025 report by consultants Ross Analytics to the federal environment department suggested that 196 of 722 bird species or subspecies it checked in Australia were at risk of wind turbine blade strike, as were 16 of 67 bat species. Overseas, the American Bird Observatory estimates wind turbines kill 1.17 million birds a year in the United States.

University of Melbourne Biodiversity Institute chief professor Brendan Wintle says detailed modelling to be released by the institute soon [eds late Feb 2026] shows renewables could be placed further west than existing sites in Queensland and NSW with much less environmental impact. Wintle says while he supports net zero, many consequences are avoidable: “They shouldn't be happening in areas that are highly sensitive and have already endured a lot of habitat destruction. The industry is looking at the easiest pathway to an extensive roll-out. The general story is that the further west you go, the lower the impact on nature and high productivity agricultural land. We see governments that are desperate to transition and that's fine but at the same time they are throwing biodiversity under the bus.”

Clearing for Boulder Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

A spokesperson for federal environment minister Murray Watt defended the government's record: “Under the government’s historic reforms to Australia’s national environmental laws delivered last November, project proponents will now have to comply with clearer, stronger and more transparent environmental laws that deliver greater environmental protections.These new laws apply the same clear, consistent rules to all sectors, from resources to renewables, ensuring better outcomes for the environment and more certainty for business. Alleged breaches of the EPBC Act are taken seriously and assessed for potential investigation.”

Clearing for Lotus Creek Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

Borumba Hydro Break-out

The Albanese Government gave the green light to the $18 billion Borumba Hydro project in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland knowing it would destroy some of the last remaining stands of critically endangered lowland rainforest and posed risks to 21 threatened animal and plant species.

The pumped hydro project 70 kilometres west of Noosa aims to be operating by 2030, supposedly providing power to two million homes in Queensland's bustling south-east corner from a 2,000-megawatt energy storage system. The project would increase the storage capacity of the existing Borumba Dam from 46 to 224 gigalitres.

The federal environment department approved Queensland Hydro's application to undertake exploratory works last December. Canberra's approval for a project that has been singled out for praise by Anthony Albanese came despite a referral report provided by state-owned project operator Queensland Hydro in response to a 2023 demand by the department for it to rewrite a draft environmental impact plan.

Borumba Dam

The resulting report concluded that 21 threatened or endangered animal and plant species could lose habitat or be killed by project works, with 314 hectares of critically endangered subtropical lowland rainforest to be drowned or bulldozed, and 4,348 hectares of other forest lost. Wildlife to be impacted included the Mary River turtle, Mary River cod, and Australian lungfish: the plight of these three species prompted former federal Labor environment minister Peter Garrett to scrap the Traveston Dam proposal downstream from Borumba on the Mary River in 2009.

Other species highlighted in the report include the Coxen's fig-parrot. One of only two Australian birds never to have been photographed, records from around Borumba Dam in the 1970s are among the last known confirmed reports of the bird. Another in the firing line is the scrub turpentine, a critically endangered rainforest plant.

Critically endangered lowland rainforest to be flooded by Borumba Hydro

National parks are supposed to be forever. Declaring a national park should be an iron-clad guarantee by government to the community that a natural area of high conservation value is assured protection from development, now and in the future. They are sacrosanct no longer, thanks to new priorities in the wake of the net zero push by federal and state governments. National parks are being frittered away for pumped hydro projects in two states.

The Borumba Hydro footprint inconveniently overlaps the boundary of Conondale National Park, known internationally as the home of one of Australia's most extraordinary animals - the gastric brooding frog - along with a many other rare plants and animals. The frog is the only vertebrate animal in the world to raise young inside its stomach. Now believed likely to be extinct, the species was last seen in the wild in the national park in 1979; naturalists hope it is holding on in remote rainforest pools.

Conondale National Park

The absence of federal approvals for Borumba Hydro at the time did not stop the then Palaszczuk state Labor government in 2022 quietly revoking 41 hectares of Conondale National Park, including pristine subtropical lowland rainforest. The developers foreshadow the revocation of at least a further 110 hectares of national park as well as excisions from state forests and other conservation reserves.

Gastric Brooding (Platypus) Frog 

The $12 billion Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme is chipping away at Kosciuszko National Park in the alpine mountains of southern NSW. The design consultant, the Singapore-owned Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, oversees the construction of high voltage power lines and 100 kilometres of roads and tracks through the park. SMEC is also the design consultant for Borumba Hydro.

Steve Burgess, a systems ecologist and the Mary River Catchment Co-ordinating Committee's catchment officer, says: “Queensland Hydro sees that the national park is in the way so they draw a line on a map and part of a national park is scrubbed because it's inconvenient.”

Yellow-bellied Glider

Burgess says power lines to the project will cut through four biodiversity corridors to the west of Borumba Dam. The project would drown 45 kilometres of fringing aquatic vegetation around the existing dam that provides nesting grounds and food sources for aquatic animals like the lungfish.

The loss of endangered lowland rainforest is of particular concern:“We are rapidly losing the small remnant patches that we've still got. Every bit is 100 per cent irreplaceable... The science is sufficiently strong to say this project should not go ahead but there is no way that [federal environment minister] Murray Watt is going to stand in the way of this. Politics will override the science.” The minister declined to comment on Borumba Hydro.

Powerful Owl

Tall eucalypt forest providing habitat for powerful owls, yellow-bellied gliders and other scarce animals will be lost. Says zoologist Ollie Scully, who surveyed areas to be impacted: “There is some spectacular old-growth forest within the catchment suitable for these species.”

Pumped hydro expert and Australian National University engineering professor Andrew Blakers slammed the project in an address to the Solar & Storage conference in Brisbane last month (eds Jan 2026]. Blakers said :“The Borumba site is really terrible because the head [the distance between water levels in the existing dam and a new upper reservoir to be built] is small and the cost of the two reservoirs is large, and that’s going to triple the cost of storage. They could do much better.”

Glossy Black Cockatoo

The Crisafulli Liberal National Party government dumped the planned five-gigawatt Pioneer Burdekin pumped hydro project inland from Mackay soon after its election in 2024, but has given no indication it will move to scrap Borumba Hydro, other than to commission a review of its cost blow-out – up from $14 billion in 2023 to $18 billion last year..

Queensland Hydro said through a spokesperson that the project has and would continue to comply with state and federal regulatory requirements, including measures to avoid, minimise and mitigate potential environmental impacts. Queensland Hydro provided details about the potential impact of Conondale National Park excisions in material submitted to the federal environment department when applying for approval for exploratory works. The approval contains “numerous conditions relating to clearing limits, environmental management and offsets”.

Wallaman Falls in north Qld - soon to be framed by wind turbines in Gawara Baya Wind Farm - Steven Nowakowski

.