Dubbleyew - I'm no greenie, but one has to remember that most of Australia's vegetation has been irretrievably altered and damaged by white inhabitants over more than 200 yrs.
In the 1960's, it was W.A. Govt policy to ensure that more than a million acres of native vegetation was cleared every year.
I was part of that wholesale clearing rampage, and our family owned a whole lot of bulldozers. Yes, a lot of farmland was developed - but way too much was cleared and salt encroachment utterly ravaged vast swathes of the W.A. wheatbelt, because of excessive clearing, and poor understanding of the mechanics of the original environment.
Much of the semi-desert interior of Australia is particularly fragile, with annual average rainfall in the 200-250mm range. That "average" might mean, say, 5 or 8 lots of rain over 3 to 5 years, and huge gaps in between, of anywhere between 6 to 36 mths between those rains.
As a result, wiping out the sparse vegetation can often result in a rapid increase in erosion by wind - and then worse erosion by water when it does rain heavily.
I've seen sizeable native trees in the W.A. goldfields (8-10M high Blackbutts) hanging so close to survival, that sweeping up the fallen leaves around the base of the tree, has killed the tree. The leaf ground cover was all that was keeping the tree going, by preventing moisture loss from dew, and by preventing the suns heat from striking the soil directly.
I don't have a problem with efforts to preserve our sparse vegetation, and to plant more trees, and to protect what little vegetation we have left.
We have literally hundreds of thousands of trail bikers and 4WD-ers who are all happy to beat the crap out of the country with their multitude of spinning wheels and general carelessness when it comes to protecting the fragile environment of the interior - and they all whine about how everyone else is damaging and degrading the countryside - while they refuse to recognise the damage they cause themselves.
The "white invaders" really are the rabbits of the human world - and I look back now, with the beauty of 20-20 vision in hindsight and understand how we could have done things so much better in the '60's and '70's, with a whole lot more foresight and planning - and restrictions.
The greenies are our conscience against rampant, unfettered, money-hungry development - and without them, the whole of Australia would just be one huge, bare dustbowl, by now.
Yes, Govt red and green tape and associated BS, has gone overboard in some areas - but we do need restrictions and serious consideration of projected works and developments - otherwise the place would become unliveable.
(P.S. - If people did their proper research before setting out, they'd quickly learn it's an offence to drive along the Trans-line access road - except for the 375km section between Kalgoorlie and Rawlinna, which is where the Loongana Lime mine is located. You can use the access road in an emergency, but you'd better have a good story).
http://www.exploroz.com/Forum/Topic/...cess_road.aspx