Coles and Woolworths are under pressure to honour their deforestation-free beef commitments after an Australian Conservation Foundation investigation detected 150 cases of deforestation with the majority linked to beef production.
The native bushland bulldozed is more than 33,000 hectares which is the size of ten Sydney Harbours.
It included Gondwana-era rainforest and critically endangered woodland that provide habitat for threatened species such as quolls and koalas.
“The Bulldozing and Broken Promises report is just a snapshot of Australia’s deforestation problem, with a minority of laggards in the beef industry ensuring Australia keeps its title as a global deforestation hotspot,” ACF deforestation expert and report author Nathaniel Pelle said.
“More forest is bulldozed in Queensland for beef, by those few laggards, than for palm oil in Indonesia.
The largest case of beef-related deforestation exceeded 1,700 hectares, at Wombinoo Station in the Great Barrier Reef catchment near Cairns and it’s not the first time deforestation has been caught on the property.
On average, almost half of clearing in Queensland occurs in Great Barrier Reef catchments.
“Our most iconic reef is being choked to death by muddy sediment caused by the bulldozing of trees upstream – it is unacceptable that this level of destruction is still happening despite recent law changes,” Mr Pelle said.
Eleven cases were identified on beef properties in the Reef catchment in this investigation, with clearing still ongoing in July 2026 on at least one property at Hervey Range west of Townsville.
“Flying over the property at Hervey Range you could see first hand the bulldozing of mature Eucalypt trees right up to the edge of waterways that flow into the Great Barrier Reef,” Mr Pelle said.
It appears federal approvals were not in place for any of the properties exposed in our investigation, and around half occurred after reforms of the EPBC Act in December 2025.
The investigation, which involved 1625 citizen scientists, found the bulldozed forests included habitat for threatened species such as koalas, quolls, greater gliders and pink cockatoos.
Who’s to blame?
Australia’s biggest supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths promised to eliminate deforestation from their supply chain by the end of 2025, but both have conceded in their 2026 sustainability reports they have not implemented those targets. McDonald’s, Australia’s biggest beef purchaser also has a deforestation target that it is yet to implement.
“If supermarkets and fast food chains can’t trace the beef they sell to deforestation-free properties, neither they nor their customers can know if it’s linked to the destruction of koalas’ homes or contributing to the erosion that is choking the Reef,” Mr Pelle said.
“To protect native animals like the koala and save the Reef, every sausage and steak sold by Coles and Woolworths, and every burger at Hungry Jack’s and McDonald’s, should be traceable to one of the many farmers who are deforestation-free.”
