I know of a at least one case of a guy buying a bush block which had lots of grass trees on it, ripped them out and sold them which almost paid for the land.
7w
Read below, I am a coconut vendor.
A team of ecologists will today assess the damage on a New South Wales Hunter Valley property after 300 endangered plants were illegally removed from the site.
It is believed the plants have been ripped up over the past month.
Persoonia pauciflora is only found at North Rothbury and has a population of about 500 mature shrubs, but that has now been halved.
The chair of the New South Wales Scientific Committee, Dr Lesley Hughes, says the removal of the plants could push the species to the brink of extinction.
"We don't know a lot about its biology, so how it'll survive in the long run given this particular event we really can't say," Dr Hughes said.
The Department of Environment and Conservation is investigating the incident, which occurred on a rural residential development site.
The developer, the Hanwood Pastoral Company, says it has no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the shrubs' removal and will take ecologists to the site today to assess the area and remaining plants.
