"We don't have much time to tell the truth," the 63-year-old farmer and grandmother said during a recent visit to her property at Croppa Creek.

Time is indeed short, with the latest figures showing land clearing is accelerating in NSW, with much of it possibly illegal. And that's before the Baird government introduces new laws later this year that many critics – including some officials – warn will increase the amount of vegetation destroyed.

"The law was still in place and this all continued to happen," she says, referring to weeks on end when properties near her echoed with the roar of bulldozers.

But reporting that destruction can bring a great toll.

Two years ago, Glen Turner, a 51-year-old senior compliance officer with the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH), was murdered when photographing from a public road the burning of cleared trees on the land of one of Anderson's neighbours.

The land's owner, then 79-year-old Ian Turnbull, rounded off nine straight days of dozer clearing by shooting Turner. In May, Turnbull was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum 24 years in jail.

For bravely raising the alarm about deforestation and loss of key koala habitat around them, Anderson has copped resentment from some locals.

Anderson, a long-time teacher of scripture at the local church, had both back tyres of a car punctured by drill bits on one occasion, rubbish dumped in water pumps, the family mailbox flattened repeatedly, and the front gate her property wrenched off its foundations.

"It's gone too far – it would take the army to police these blokes," Anderson says, adding residents have been run off the roads into ditches by local bullies.

Fairfax Media understands that OEH staff have lately been advised by police to delay some inspections of farms suspected to be clearing land illegally – an outcome that disappoints Turner's widow, Alison McKenzie.

"The law's the law," McKenzie says. "We all have to have permission to cut down one tree let alone 1000."

A government source said that while some inspections had been delayed they had not been stopped.

'Left, right and centre'

However, Chris Nadolny, a former OEH senior ecologist who worked closely with Turner, said any delays would hinder what are often very difficult legal cases to launch against illegal land clearing.

"They try to get rid of evidence as quickly as possible," Nadolny says. "When [Turner and I] arrived at Turnbull's place, there were fires left, right and centre."

Nadolny, who fears he would have probably been shot had he been with Turner on the day of his murder, said a range of major cases against broadscale clearing, particularly in the state's north-west, had not gone to court.

In one case, the OEH investigating officer took a redundancy, while in other instances the two-year statute of limitations – with the clock ticking from the time a complaint is lodged – proved too short.

"The timing of compliance investigations can be impacted by a number of factors including safety, weather and expert or witness availability," Terry Bailey, OEH's chief executive, said, adding the two-year period "is considered sufficient time for a thorough investigation".

Simon Smith, a former head of OEH's operations stretching across northern NSW, said his office would typically receive 300 or more land-clearing complaints a year. These would be reduced to 50 priority cases and only about 10 would be taken to court.

The government's own data shows just 31 successful prosecutions over the eight years to 2013-14.

"One officer can only do two-three cases, maximum," Smith said, adding his office would usually have three compliance officers.

"The focus is on trees but a lot of the clearing in western NSW is of the rangelands and open woods," Mr Smith said. "That is difficult to pick up on satellite imagery but is nevertheless important."

'Raging inferno'

Phil Spark, from Northwest Ecological Services, has documented many instances of mass clearing, handing over video, photos, landscape notes and other material to OEH.

Just weeks ago, Spark came across clearing near the road north of Walgett on the way to Lightning Ridge.

"The guy had such a raging inferno going," Spark says. "It was coolibah and black box woodland – it's an endangered ecological community ... They included big trees that certainly couldn't be cleared legally," he says.

A recent visit by Fairfax Media to the region around Brewon Station, a huge property owned by P&J Harris and Sons, found disturbance of a different kind.

The Travelling Stock Reserve, public land set aside for drovers to bring their stock along to graze on the much-vaunted Mitchell native grasses, had been ploughed up with the area now turned to weed.

In a June letter by Local Land Services seen by Fairfax Media, local manager Ken Flower said Peter and Jane Harris had been sent a separate letter on July 2, 2014, "requesting that over a two-year period, they peg the boundary, allow the area to recover, and actively regenerate the area if natural recovery of the grassland does not occur".

Fairfax Media sought comment from the Harrises and from Local Land Services.

Short-term gain

Kevin Humphries, a Nationals MP whose electorate takes in both Walgett and Croppa Creek, says he has backed the repeal of the Native Vegetation Act since being elected to the seat of Barwon in 2007. He also welcomes the prospect of greater self-assessment for farmers.

"The current Native Vegetation law puts the onus of biodiversity entirely on farmers, it doesn't share the responsibility across society," Humphries says.

"Not all farmers want to clear and not all land is appropriate for farming - farmers know that vegetation plays an important role in the health of their soils and it is in their interest to find a balance," he says.

The problem is that developer-farmer groups have a big incentive to clear land, particularly for crops. As Justice Peter Johnson noted in sentencing Turnbull, the value of the two properties bought in 2011 had risen steeply from $5.1 million to about $7.6 million by the time of the murder.

The clearing can often produce only short-term farming returns, ecologists and former farm managers say.

"Out west, it's very marginal, perhaps one crop every five years," Spark says. "It's not like they are clearing the land for its amazing productivity."

The extent of wide-scale land clearing across NSW is exposed in "Cultivating Murder" a new documentary soon to be released by filmmaker Gregory Miller. The filmmakers are launching a Pozible crowd-funding campaign to finish the film, which uses evidence from the murder trial and suggests big farmers and land developers are now pushing harder than ever to fully industrialise the rural landscape.

'Failed legislation'

Penny Sharpe, Labor's environment spokeswoman, says the proposed Biodiversity Conservation bill and amended Local Land Services act will make things worse.

"If implemented, the outcomes for native animals and plants, soil, water and land will be a disaster for NSW," Sharpe says, adding the laws must "recognise that some native vegetation cannot be offset and that with less than 10 per cent of land in NSW in pristine condition, what is left should be protected not destroyed."

Greens environment spokeswoman Mehreen Faruqi says the two-year statute of limitations for illegal clearing should be extended, and more resources given to compliance.

"There are only around 24 regional operations staff monitoring compliance across the whole state and this is on top of their other jobs," Faruqi says.

"The vast majority of rural landholders comply with the law," she adds. "They want to see people who have illegally cleared land to face the consequences of their actions."

Derek Shoen, president of NSW Farmers, said his association's members had "lived through over 20 years of failed legislation", and want many amendments.

Among the concerns are the powers of entry and investigation as proposed in the draft bill "which allows an officer to enter land without a reason or without seeking permission or giving notice to the landholder", he said.

"Not only would this be an infringement of civil rights there are serious bio-security and safety implications that anyone involved in farming or natural resource management knows need to be respected."

Kate Smolski, chief executive of the NSW Nature Conservation Council, said that a glaring absence in the new draft laws is the lack of "red" zones where no clearing is permitted, with or without offsets.

"Under the Baird government's proposed regime, nothing is considered too precious to destroy," Smolski says. "We believe any credible regime of conservation laws has to include non-negotiable protection for areas like koala habitat and wetlands."  

'Every square inch'

Back in Croppa Creek, though, there is little sign of a balance being struck. The region's Gwydir wetlands, for instance, have lost 80 per cent of their vegetation in the past 15 years alone, according to Smith, the former OEH official.

"Every square inch of earth – they don't want to waste anything," Anderson says, as she takes her visitor along a tree line she is replanting to bolster the region's shrinking koala habitat.

The result of the clearing is not just habitat loss but silt building up as riverine trees are cleared and billabongs filled, she says.

"We should all be good stewards and put aside some land for wildlife – and maintain or improve the land."

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