The call comes as the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) conducts a review of the Sandalwood (Limitation of Removal of Sandalwood) Order (No. 2) 2015, which expires in December 2026.

CCWA Executive Director Matt Roberts said a parliamentary inquiry over a decade ago concluded that existing wild take limits were unsustainable and recommended an immediate review to prevent further degradation.

“For almost 200 years, successive WA governments have allowed the rampant destruction of Sandalwood. It was one of the Swan River colony’s earliest and most profitable exports – our first iron ore,” Mr Roberts said.

“CCWA’s Back from the Brink report calls for urgent reforms to the Biodiversity Conservation Act (BCA) to address deficiencies like this which have led to the annual destruction of around 40,000 mature, old growth sandalwood trees.

“The current review presents a real opportunity for the Labor government to correct the mistakes of the past and prevent further native flora extinctions in WA. Wild sandalwood (Santalum spicatum) is a culturally significant, slow-growing native species that has been mined to the absolute brink.

“As a result of this mismanagement, sandalwood has largely disappeared across much of its original range and was listed as ‘vulnerable’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List in 2021.

“Over the past 25 years, the Forest Products Commission (FPC) has been responsible for the majority – at least 90 per cent - of government-approved wild sandalwood mining. Additionally, due to a legislative loophole, the FPC’s mining operations have sat outside the control of current order and have not been constrained by the BCA for the past decade.

“Rather than ‘formalising’ an agreement between the FPC and State Government, we’re calling for a recommendation to end it.

“Heavy commercial extraction has led to a catastrophic decline, with wild populations estimated to have fallen by up to 90 per cent over the past century.

“Under the current Order, total wild take limits sit at 2,500 tonnes per annum (tpa), allowing up to 1,250 tpa of ‘green’ sandalwood - uprooting whole, live mature trees. This practice destroys approximately 40,000 mature, slow-growing wild trees every single year.

"We cannot continue to treat finite wild ecosystems like an endless quarry. Allowing 40,000 mature living trees to be ripped from the ground every year is ecological vandalism."

While DBCA’s proposed review suggests reducing green sandalwood take limits to 750 tpa, CCWA said this still falls far short of what is required to achieve genuine sustainability and leaves the 1,250 tpa limit on dead sandalwood unchanged.

Mr Roberts said the previous parliamentary inquiry found that to bring greenwood mining down to a level matching current regeneration limits would need to be approximately 200 tonnes per year.

“Crucially, a revised limit of 750 tpa remains far higher than any current or projected requirements for WA’s emerging First Nations-led sandalwood sector, which currently harvests under 200 tonnes per year,” Mr Roberts said.

"DBCA's proposed reduction to 750 tonnes a year is a token step that still ignores basic ecological reality. A 200-tonne limit would adequately safeguard the First Nations-led sandalwood enterprise sector, while giving wild populations a chance to recover.

“Given the current order has been failing to protect sandalwood for over a decade. Unless meaningful action is taken immediately, this government is sending another species one step closer to extinction."

CCWA is calling on the State Government to adopt new take limits strictly aligned with biological regeneration rates, end the role of the FPC in the removal, supply, or commercialisation of wild sandalwood, and transition commercial supply toward sustainable plantation sources.

ENDS

Media Contact: John Cooke – 0433 679 780