Protected Plant Clearing Permits Queensland

What a protected plant clearing permit is

A protected plant clearing permit is the authority required under the Nature Conservation Act 1992 before clearing a threatened or near threatened plant, or clearing within 100 metres of one. The operating detail sits in the Nature Conservation (Plants) Regulation 2020. Clearing means taking a plant from where it is growing, which covers removing it or destroying it.

The permit is the step after a flora survey rather than an alternative to one. What that survey finds in the clearing impact area decides which of two paths the site is on, and only one of them involves a permit at all.

It catches people out in two ways. The first is that it applies to plants growing in the wild, so a plant in a garden sits outside it entirely, and the department publishes an operational policy on where that line falls. Vegetation mapping is the other one. An area shown as category X under the Vegetation Management Act 1999 can still need a permit under the protected plant provisions, because category X is a statement about one framework and says nothing at all about this one.

What happens after the flora survey

A flora survey has to be carried out by a suitably qualified person against the department’s flora survey guideline, and it covers the clearing impact area. The Regulation defines that as the area to be cleared plus a buffer, typically 100 metres, so the area surveyed is materially larger than the area to be cleared.

Where the report finds no threatened or near threatened plants in that area, no permit is needed, but the obligations do not stop. The flora survey report and an exempt clearing notification are submitted to the department through Online Services at least one week before clearing starts and no later than 12 months after the survey was completed, and the clearing itself has to be carried out within three years of the report being completed. Miss the three years and the survey has to be done again.

Where the report identifies even one threatened or near threatened plant in the clearing impact area, a protected plant clearing permit has to be obtained before any clearing begins.

What the permit application has to establish

Applications are assessed against the department’s protected plants assessment guideline. Most of the work of preparing one is demonstrating what has been done to avoid and reduce the impact before asking to clear anything.

The Regulation’s term for that work is an impact management measure, defined as work or an activity undertaken to ensure the survival of a threatened or near threatened plant, with transplanting and propagating given as the examples. Those measures are usually set out in a document the industry calls an impact management plan. The phrase does not appear in the Act or the Regulation, so it is worth being precise about what is being asked for when a council officer or a consultant uses it.

Where an impact cannot be avoided, an environmental offset may be conditioned on the permit to counterbalance a significant residual impact, under the Environmental Offsets Act 2014. This is commonly the largest single cost in the whole framework, and it is far better understood before an application is lodged than after a condition has been drafted.

A fee is payable on application, and concessional fees are available where the clearing relates to certain activities, including educational or scientific research and establishing necessary fences, firebreaks and roads, under section 180 of the Nature Conservation (Plants) Regulation 2020.

Before an application is lodged

The department will meet an applicant before a permit application is made, through a pre-design conference, and very few applicants use it. On a site with a difficult species, a large clearing footprint or a likely offset condition, that meeting can change the shape of the application and is a great deal cheaper than a refusal.

The department’s permits and licensing team can be reached on 1300 130 372, option 4.

When to get us involved

• A flora survey has come back with a listed species on it - and you need to know whether the clearing can be redesigned around it before an application is prepared.
• A development approval is in place and clearing is imminent - a development approval under the Planning Act 2016 is not itself an authority to clear a protected plant.
• Clearing has already happened - and you need the position assessed before deciding what to do about it.
• An offset condition is likely - and the exposure needs sizing while the design can still change.
• The site is mapped high risk and the works are still on paper - the cheapest point at which any of this can be dealt with.

What we deliver

• Trigger map check - whether the site falls in a high risk area, and whether a survey is required at all.
• Flora survey and report - conducted against the flora survey guideline, covering the clearing impact area and its buffer.
• Exempt clearing notification - where the survey finds nothing, the report and notification prepared and lodged inside the timeframes above.
• Permit application - the supporting material, including the impact management measures proposed for each plant affected and the justification for the clearing sought.
• Offset advice - where a significant residual impact is likely, what an offset condition would mean in practice.

Related services

• Protected plant flora surveys - the survey that decides whether a permit is needed.
• Vegetation clearing assessments - the separate Vegetation Management Act pathway that runs alongside this one.
• Significant residual impact assessments - the assessment that sizes an offset liability.
• Biodiversity offset strategies - where an offset is conditioned on a permit.
• Property maps of assessable vegetation - locking in vegetation mapping, which is a separate question to this one.

Get a quote

If a flora survey has found a threatened or near threatened plant on your site, the next decision is whether the clearing can be redesigned around it or whether a permit application is the way forward. We can look at the survey report and the clearing footprint and tell you which. Call (07) 3018 7538 or request a quote online.