30 June 2025. Lloyd Hick, Cattle Board President.
Queensland's peak representative body for rural producers has condemned the Australian Conservation Foundation for its latest misleading campaign against Australian cattle producers.
AgForce Cattle President Lloyd Hick says AgForce has thrown its support behind Property Rights Australia's calls for ACF's tax free status as a registered charity to be withdrawn in response to its deceptive "Bulldozing the Bush" campaign.
As part of its attack the Australian Conservation Foundation has coordinated 675 'citizen scientists' to study satellite images - stating they found evidence of 90,000ha of cleared bushland across 176 properties around Australia.over 5 years
Mr Hick says the ACF's claims that beef production was the primary driver of destruction of nationally important threatened species habitat distorted important facts.
"The Australian Beef industry can rightfully be proud of its credentials and ongoing work in protecting and investing in the environment alongside producing some of the best beef in the world," Mr Hick said.
"It is therefore deeply disappointing to have a group like ACF write an, at best, misleading report with a sensationalist headline in what can only be assumed is a campaign to derail our industry's ongoing work."
Property Rights Australia has expressed outrage at the ACF's actions which the landholder group described as "a spurious attack" on farmers.
Mr Hick says AgForce shares their concerns, particularly as the ACF had provided little to no detail in the report on its claims of illegal clearing activity. Relying on the ambiguity to pursue its biased messaging.
He's also concerned by ACF's actions of contacting landowners directly 'to inform them of their obligations', then reporting landholder actions to beef industry supply chains, and accusing Australia's major banks of 'financing destruction'.
"This puts at risk the food security our industry provides and creates an enormous mental strain on producers so invested in delivering so much environmentally, socially and economically," he said.
"The Australian Conservation Council claims to care about the environment, yet it continues to act in ways that put the environment at risk.
"Do they really understand what they are doing and is it deliberate? The ACF's accusations of widespread illegal activity by the cattle industry is damaging and defamatory and is a thinly veiled attempt to lobby the federal government to include even more stringent red tape against landholders in the upcoming review of the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC).
"This comes only a month after the European Commission declared Australia at low risk of deforestation.
"The ACF report is full of half stories and mistruths, too numerous to call out here. At is core though it is dangerous, it must be ignored and called out by policy makers, community, and industry."
Producers in Queensland particularly must already comply with very stringent vegetation management laws, to say the clearing is illegal is plainly wrong. The ACF are doing nothing other than trying to brainwash people who may not know what vegetation management looks like with images of dozers and fallen trees for their anti-agriculture agenda.
He said AgForce and industry will not and cannot stand back while ACF engages in such mischievous attacks, by selectively cherry-picking deforestation definitions that were not accurate for the circumstances.
"Australia has a great opportunity to recognise the fact that active management and stewardship of the land by producers drives improved long-term biodiversity and environmental metrics, and they exist from cattle production; not in spite of it. There is now the opportunity for this to be reflected accurately in upcoming reforms to the EPBC act. " he said.
"It is time that industry is engaged with in these reforms as the key participant that can deliver outcomes and not as an afterthought stakeholder."
"In the meantime, we call on the ACF to withdraw the report, consider the emerging science and data and engage with industry not baselessly vilify it"
