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A wealthy farmer who once headed up GrainCorp has been fined more than $1 million in the state’s largest-ever fine for an individual convicted of land clearing, and his company has been fined another $1.1 million.
Ronald Lewis Greentree and Auen Grain, a company owned and controlled by Greentree, were found guilty of illegally bulldozing, burning and ploughing vegetation including native woodland on his property north-west of Narrabri in NSW.
The NSW Land and Environment Court on Friday fined Greentree $1,015,200 and Auen Grain a further $1,072,800 for six offences under the Native Vegetation Act 2003 and two under the Local Land Services Act 2013.
The land clearing in 2016-19 occurred at Boolcarrol, a 34,000-hectare property with grazing and cropping north-west of Narrabri. The cleared land was 1262 hectares, about 10 per cent of the property at the time.
Greentree has since sold most of the land, but still retains 6.48 hectares.
Ron Greentree, a farmer and former chairman of GrainCorp, pictured in 2013.Credit: Nic Walker
Greentree and Auen Grain pleaded not guilty, but were found guilty in a December 2022 decision. The court deferred its sentencing decision for nearly two years.
In a decision published on Friday, Justice John Robson found beyond reasonable doubt that the clearing had damaged coolabah-black box woodlands and likely that it had harmed eight threatened fauna species.
These included the pale-headed snake, south-eastern glossy black-cockatoo, brown treecreeper, painted honeyeater, grey-crowned babbler, hooded robin, diamond firetail and yellow-bellied sheath-tailed bat.
Justice Robson also found that the harm that could be caused by the clearing was “manifest and reasonably foreseeable”, and that there was no evidence the defendants tried to avoid it.