Land clearing could affect Australia's access to European markets under proposed new laws and local environmental lobbyists are in Brussels asking lawmakers to go further, scrutinising finance for "destructive industries" like beef.
The European Commission has drafted laws designed to tackle deforestation and forest degradation across the globe.
The laws would apply to beef, palm oil, soy, wood, cocoa, and coffee products, as well as the feed used to produce them.
Exporting countries would be categorised as low, standard and high risk for the different commodities.
While European importers would only need to carry out simplified due diligence duties for exports from low risk countries, they would be forced to scrutinise the green credentials of goods from high risk countries more thoroughly.
Australia may rank poorly. The 2022 Environmental Performance Index is built by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and The Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
For tree loss, the EPI's current rankings put Australia at 105 out of 180 countries.
Now, the Wilderness Society has lobbyists in Brussels, preparing to meet with key European decision-makers.
They plan to present a petition that's already amassed more than 10,000 signatories asking the European Union to go further and apply the same rules to financiers, while highlighting the impact of Australian land clearing.
"The crisis is enabled in part by European banks and investors, which are financing destructive industries in Australia," the petition reads in part.
"European finance is helping industries like beef production to continue destroying forests without strong restrictions, pushing iconic animals like the koala on the verge of extinction: this needs to change."
Investors from three member countries of the European Union - the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany - own a combined 2,165,000 hectares of Australian agricultural land, dwarfing all other nations.
The United States is next with 1,371,000ha, according to the latest Foreign Investment Review Board data.
Other large landholding international investors, such as China, are more dominant in leasehold farmland.
Wilderness Society of Australia manager of policy and strategy Tim Beshara said the sheer area of agricultural land meant farming was responsible for much of the damage to Australia's environment, although most farmers did the right thing.
"From the data we've looked at, land clearing is much more associated with the sale of a property," he said.
"Immediately after the sale of a pastoral property, there is a higher chance of large-scale clearing.
"Farmers are the best environmentalists until they're not, and someone new undoes the work of the previous farmer who was doing an amazing job looking after their natural capital."
The Wilderness Society was not targeting responsible land managers, Mr Beshara said.
"The clearing of remnant or high conservation value forests and bush land and at a scale that involves two D9s and a chain is the form of clearing for agricultural expansion or intensification that is our real concern," he said.
"We're looking to see if we can get those sorts of issues accounted for in investor and corporate decisions."
Even so, there's some contention about what the definition of land clearing or deforestation should be.
Pastoral areas are often permitted to be cleared of what's considered invasive regrowth.
"There are examples where environmentalists, scientists and pastoralists would agree and disagree on some of those things," Mr Beshara said.
The invasive native species part of NSW's Land Management (Native Vegetation) Code allows the removal of invasive native species that have reached "unnatural" densities and dominate an area so a better balance could be restored.
Mr Beshara said the evidence regarding natural densities was "muddy" but he had some sympathy for the concept.
"I hear that argument and there might be some cases where that happens, but there's also cases where that's an excuse for conversion of a shrubby woodland into non-native grasses among scattered gum trees," he said.
Most of the time, Mr Beshara said, farmers and environmental groups both wanted the same outcomes but he argued the farm lobby groups were being left behind.
"I would be talking to government about how it's inevitable there's going to be requirements put on agriculture around environmental protection we haven't seen before, whether it's international capital or international market access," he said.
"I would be looking to the government for help to meet those standards."