Offsetting Paradise? The Ridiculous Logic of Destroying Wallum to "Save" It.
Offsetting ancient habitat is like painting over a Picasso and calling it a mural!
Imagine a pricelesscoastal heathland, buzzing with life — koalas crunching eucalyptus leaves, Glossy Black Cockatoos cracking she-oak seeds, Wallum Sedge Frogs calling from acidic ferny swamps. Now imagine a developer saying:
“Don’t worry, we’re going to bulldoze this, but we’ll grow something sort of like it somewhere else.”
Welcome to the twisted world of biodiversity offsets, where destroying unique, ancient ecosystems like the Wallum at Bayside Brunswick Heads is treated as a clerical error — just plant a few trees and voilà, problem solved.
Let’s be clear: Wallum ecosystems are irreplaceable. Planing 2 seedlings does not replace the ancient hollow bearing trees they want to cut down.
The sandy soils, acidic swamps, and interwoven plant and animal communities have evolved over thousands of years. They can’t simply be recreated in another postcode. There is no “spare Wallum” waiting in the wings. And they tried, but couldn't find one, 14 years ago! (JWA, 2011)
Yet Clarence Property proposes to offset the destruction of high ecological value land, home to:
Koalas, listed as endangered,
Glossy Black Cockatoos, reliant on specific she-oaks,
The critically endangered Wallum Sedge Frog, which only breeds in acidic, fish-free swamps,
And 76 old-growth Scribbly Gums, some over 300 years old.
Offsets treat this web of life like numbers in a spreadsheet: remove habitat here, add some trees there, tick a box. It’s like demolishing the Opera House, then building a new piano somewhere inland and calling it even.
Offsetting assumes that habitat can be replaced. But what’s the offset for a 300-year-old tree hollow? For a coastal wetland that frogs have depended on for millennia? For a cultural landscape sacred to the Bundjalung people?
There is no offset for extinction.
If this sounds absurd, it’s because it is. And if we let this logic stand, we’re not just losing ecosystems — we’re losing our grip on reality.
Don’t offset it. Protect it.