Advocates say environmental offsets are an easy way for developers to bypass proper environmental protections.

The Urban Bushland Council made a submission earlier this year regarding the effectiveness of environmental offsets, asking why these sites are often located kilometres away from the impacted sites.

The submission included six other criticisms involving project transparency, lack of expert opinion in decision-making, and commitments to planting native vegetation.

Developers working on North Stoneville (Main Roads WA) and Anketell Road (Satterly Property Group) plan to have environmental offsets in locations more than 50 kilometres away from the impacted sites.

Environmental offsets are intended to counter balance damage done to the environment by either improving, rehabilitating or conserving a piece of habitat.

The UBC says offsets should be the last option in the mitigation hierarchy, because the principle of “avoid” should be the dominant principle.

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water say the offsets are “only an option after you’ve tried to avoid or mitigate any impacts”, and it doesn’t make “an unacceptable impact acceptable”.

UBC chair Christine Richardson says developers are jumping to environmental offsets, as it is the “easiest” option.

“In the conservation sector, we would say developers seem to go straight to the bottom, straight to offsets…so then you have loss of native vegetation.”

She says offsets are “often a poor representation of the environment lost”.

Perth is a biodiversity hotspot and we’ve already lost probably 70 per cent of our natural landscape.

Christine Richardson

“It’s harder now to secure offsets because everything’s been cleared.”

Both North Stoneville and Anketell proposals include habitat assessments for black cockatoos, as both developments impact their habitat.

However, these sites are far from the cockatoos, with the North Stoneville offset site located in Williams, more than 150km away.

The Anketell Road offset sites at St Ronans, Gabbadah and Lake Mealup, which are between 50 and 100km away.

The North Stoneville proposal further revealed the Williams site had “no evidence of cockatoos roosting” as per a 2022 assessment, yet it still received a habitat score of eight out of ten.

Save the Black Cockatoos coordinator and environmental advocate Paddy Cullen says these offset sites don’t address the needs of black cockatoos.

“Those cockatoos aren’t going to suddenly get up and fly 100 kilometres away to another area of bush.

“And if the area of bush was suitable for black cockatoos, they’d be there already,” Mr Cullen says.

He says black cockatoos are WA’s indicator species of the environment, where “their decline is an indication of the loss of habitat”.

 The Great Cocky Count continues to see an estimated 15 per cent decline every year on the Swan Coastal Plain.

Mr Cullen says current offset schemes are failing WA’s bushland.

They shouldn’t even use the word offset. They should call it environmental deficit because it’s always about taking away habitat. It never returns back.

Paddy Cullen

The Office of the Auditor General is expected to release a report later this year on the effectiveness of environmental offsets.

Ms Richardson hopes the report will highlight the need to change the current system.

“The Environmental Protection Agency hardly ever says no, and even if the EPA says no, the minister can say yes.”

She also says the report will give rare insight into data from offset sites, as there is currently no information available to the public.

“Any systematic information about the delivery of the conditions is few and far between, or it’s piecemeal, it’s not aggregated up.”