THE Palaszczuk government is set to review its controversial trigger maps presented on the Queensland Globe website.
More than a third of the current trigger map is expected to be removed after Queensland Country Life exposed major flaws in the mapping last week.
The flawed mapping has proven extremely embarrassing for Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch, who is already under pressure for her at seemingly at odds stance with the Palaszczuk government's Adani mine approval.
Queensland Country Life put a series of questions to the minister on Monday. However, the minister's office is still to respond.
Trigger maps identify 'high-risk areas' where endangered, vulnerable or near threatened plants are present or are likely to be present.
However, the trigger maps released by the Department of Environment on May 31 were ridiculed. Concrete and steel infrastructure including Suncorp Stadium, the Gabba, and the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre as well as canal developments, bitumen airstrips, water storages, and ploughed paddocks are all shown to be high risk areas.
According to a statement issues by the Department of Environment to Queensland Country Life today, some of those areas will be removed from the map.
Trigger mapping is of particular concern to landholders, as they can be found on category X land classifications on certification vegetation management maps.
In most cases, vegetation management on category X area is recognised as exempt clearing work and does not require a notification or development approval under the Vegetation Management Act 1999.
Landholders who fall foul of trigger maps can face fines of up to $400,000 for breaches of the Nature Conservation Act.
Information used to create the trigger maps is supplied by the Queensland Herbarium, a government body long criticised by rural industry for its inaccurate mapping.
Since first revealed by Queensland Country Life on June 18 that new trigger mapping was flawed, the Department of Environment has been inundated with complaints.
According to the department the map is currently being updated and improved to ensure the information is as 'refined' as possible.
"This is part of a process which has been ongoing since 2014 when triggers maps were first introduced by the previous government," the statement reads.
According to the department a person may request that a high risk area be removed from the trigger map.
However, a suitably qualified person (e.g. ecologist or botanist) must have undertaken a flora survey and certify that they have found no endangered, vulnerable or near threatened plants in the area, or within 100m of the area, using the Queensland Government's flora survey guideline.
That exercise is estimated to cost landholders who challenge the maps anywhere between $5000 and $25,000.
Despite the massive flaws in the current mapping, the department says the accuracy of the maps has improved markedly since 2014.