Our work in numbers

Our presence at Annual General Meetings (AGMs) highlights the important role corporations must play in helping to safeguard Australia’s forests and bushland. It’s also a chance to hold corporate decision-makers accountable. By exposing a corporation’s most valued audience—its shareholders—to the threats nature faces, we’re empowering them to join the call for change.

Coles AGM (Melbourne)

As native animals like koalas lose their homes to bulldozers and chainsaws—including for some supermarket products like some beef, packaging and pallets—Coles and Woolies are raking in huge profits and responding to the extinction crisis with glossy corporate slogans.

Together, we’re demanding better. This message was delivered loud and clear outside the Coles AGM in November: supermarkets must take deforestation off the shelves.

And on the same day, in front of Coles stores across the country, supporters like you were out in force—holding signs, funding billboards and demanding action. Supporters also posted over 150 comments on Coles Instagram feed, calling for the supermarket giant to commit to going deforestation-free!

Woolworths AGM (Sydney)

In November, we also attended the Woolworths AGM, where two of our campaigners put a number of questions to the board regarding its commitments to going deforestation-free. The company didn’t give further detail about how it plans on turning its promises into reality.

Over ten thousand of you have already petitioned the Coles and Woolworths CEOs to demand they fix their deforestation problem—and it’s working. Woolworths has promised to clean up its act; with your help, we’ll keep the pressure on Coles until we get a real public commitment.

South32 AGM (Perth)

Community members gathered outside South32's AGM in October to protest bauxite mining expansion in WA’s irreplaceable jarrah forests. The jarrah is the most diverse temperate forest left on Earth—a global biodiversity hotspot—and teeming with rare and precious plants and animals.

Noongar Cultural Knowledge Holders, the Western Australian Forest Alliance and the Wilderness Society went inside South32’s AGM to tell corporate decision-makers the jarrah forest strip-mining proposals should not proceed as the biodiversity and climate risks are too high.

Thank you to all our supporters for helping ensure nature has a voice in corporate boardrooms.

Munga-Thirri / Simpson Desert is a vast, globally-important wilderness in the heart of Australia—with continuous First Nations custodianship stretching back thousands of years.

It’s home to the world’s longest parallel sand dunes. When it rains in Munga-Thirri, temporary wetlands appear teeming with bird life. Spectacular native flowers burst into colour across the burnt orange sand—a beautiful garden that seems to stretch beyond what our eyes can see.

In 2021, tens of thousands of Wilderness Society supporters like you convinced the South Australian government to create Australia’s largest national park: the Munga-Thirri / Simpson Desert National Park. At 3.6 million hectares, Munga-Thirri National Park is nearly twice the size of Kakadu National Park!

It was an incredible achievement, but there was still work to be done. As illogical as it sounds, fossil fuel companies still held leases to potentially expand the gas industry across the park.

And if it seems outrageous that a national park can be managed for both conservation and mining—that’s because it is!

But thanks to people like you, we:

• Secured election commitments from the South Australian government to retire the leases

• Put up billboards in key locations across Adelaide keeping pressure on the government

• Mobilised and sent thousands of emails asking the government to keep its promise. And now it has!

The last parliamentary sitting week of 2024 saw a strange thing happen. The Prime Minister intervened to derail a deal his own Environment Minister negotiated. A deal that could have strengthened Australia’s failing nature laws.

This means urgently needed nature law reforms are not likely to pass before the next federal election.

The grave threats to Australia’s iconic environment aren’t going away. And neither are we.

86,000 Wilderness Society supporters have taken action for laws that will actually protect Australia’s extraordinary environment. As a Wilderness Society supporter, you showed up when it mattered.

People like you have signed petitions, rallied in large numbers, knocked on doors or engaged their local MP to show our politicians the groundswell of community support for nature laws that protect Australia’s iconic species and globally important places. Actions like these have inspired key politicians to put deforestation, extinctions and the need for the public to have a fair say on the agenda.

We’re here, we care, and together we will continue to push the government to do its job and prioritise Australia’s unique natural environment.

Through our people-powered satellite monitoring platform, Watch on Nature, you're helping uncover the devastating deforestation corporations want to keep hidden.

Mature trees reduced to rubble, endangered wildlife displaced, and thriving forests turned into wastelands: this is the reality of corporate-led deforestation.

Your donations have funded several crucial drone operations in recent months, capturing real-time footage of forest destruction—including new evidence of bushland cleared for beef production in Goomally, Queensland.

This video proof has been invaluable in holding corporations accountable, sparking public outrage, and strengthening the case for protecting Australian forests. And these missions are key in pushing for stricter laws that stop deforestation in its tracks.

Here’s what your support has achieved:

• Satellite Monitoring Success: Our team of GIS analysts and volunteers identified new areas of forest loss in Queensland, providing the first step in exposing illegal and unethical clearing.

• Drone Evidence in Action: Drones deployed over Western Australia’s jarrah forests captured the stark reality of forest destruction, amplifying our campaigns and mobilising community support.

Recently, we asked you to tell us your favourite forest, and why you love it. (The South West forests of WA and Tasmania's Tarkine were the most frequently mentioned!). Here's a selection of your responses.

• The Leard Forest (NSW): it’s unique and stunning. It’s home to endangered species and deserves to be protected.

• Croajingolong NP (Vic): it’s vast and home to a variety of flora and fauna.

• South West forests (WA): amazing wildflowers and biodiversity.

• Cornubia Forest Park (Qld): a beautiful, healthy forest for flora and fauna and humans.

• Eungella state forest (Qld): the butterflies, the platypus, the trees, all the good stuff!

• Mt Wellington (Tas): love the peace, the diversity and ease of access, making it a frequent place to be.

• Cumberland Plain Woodland (NSW): great diversity and interesting bird species.

• Tropical woodland in Kakadu (WA): it feels like home after 50 years of long bushwalks there.

• High country (Vic): it is beautiful and the home to the fabulous mountain pygmy possum.

• Blue Mountains (NSW): I love the beautiful cliffs and trees.

• The Bibbulmun track (WA): its beauty is in the forests and coastal veg communities it goes through.

• Mount Farrell Regional Reserve (Tas): the small lakes in the park are pristine and there are few people-visitors, but lots of wildlife to see, so it is very peaceful.

• Marysville State Forest (Vic): fantastic Antarctic Beech Trees.

• Greswell forest (Vic): I have a personal connection to it, with its variety of seasonal wildlife and shady tree walks!!

• Noosa National Park (Qld), in particular the Tanglewood Track… there are many large and beautiful trees, including some enormous strangler figs which are slowly replacing their hosts.