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EDO NSW has expressed significant concerns about the implementation of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 and associated regulations and orders. This latest proposal on the detail of how future mine rehabilitation can be counted as biodiversity offsets continues the process of undermining protection for biodiversity in NSW.
We re-iterate our opposition to the use of mine rehabilitation as an offset for biodiversity destruction. In our opinion, there is no independent, scientifically verified evidence that mine site rehabilitation can replicate the biodiversity values that are lost through mining. Further, there are strong community expectations that any approval to undertake mining activities should be accompanied by requirements to rehabilitate the land to a pre-mining equivalent condition, quite separately to the need to compensate for the loss of biodiversity caused by the mining activity.
