The amount of land "disturbed" by mining companies in Western Australia is roughly equivalent to the size of Hong Kong, new figures have revealed.
The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety data was made public just before Christmas, and found more than 118,730 hectares of land had been disturbed by mining tenements across the state over a number of years.
The area is equivalent to 1187.3 square kilometres - slightly bigger than the size of Hong Kong (1104 km2).
This is around 0.05 per cent of WA's total landmass.
In comparison, 36,491 hectares or 364.9 square kilometres, was determined to be "under rehabilitation" - around the same land mass as the Maldives.
The majority of disturbances stemmed from existing mining leases, with a total of 891 hectares also disturbed due to various licenses allocated to mining companies by the state government.
While the figures are initially significant, the department said the data does "not include include disturbance and rehabilitation attributable to operators under a state agreement".
The WA government only terminated its state agreement governing natural gas exploration and potential production in the Kimberley in November 2017, which means the data doesn't indicate how much land has been disturbed or rehabilitated in the Canning Basin area over the course of the year.
The onshore Canning Basin currently covers an area of about 53,000,000 hectares.
Wilderness Society WA state director Jenita Enevoldsen said this is a significant chunk of missing data.
"These figures completely miss out any of the bushland clearing that would have been undertaken by Buru Energy or Mitsubishi in the Canning Basin for fracking," she said.
The last available documents relating to "disturbed" land dates back to 2013 - the same year the Canning Basin Joint Venture Agreement was made.
The department also signals the data should not be taken at face-value in its footnotes.
"[The data] therefore reflects only a sub-set of mining activity across the state and is unlikely to be indicative of the industry as a whole," it reads.
Following the release of its data, the state government announced plans to "streamline" water and environment assessment and approval, with a new online portal developed for project applicants.
Water Minister Dave Kelly said the move away from the common three-step approval process was to make it "easier for the public and industry to do business with government departments.
Environment Minister Stephen Dawson said despite potentially mitigating the involvement of the Department of Water, Environmental Regulation and the Office of the Environmental Protection Authority, there would still be the same emphasis on "environmental rigour" given to potential proposals.
"Many project assessments previously required proponents to bounce from one door to another, causing frustration with the process.
"[The] new webpage will be welcomed by industry and our stakeholders as a better way to do business."
However Ms Enevoldsen said the gaps in the existing data indicated there needed to be more transparency and rigor around documenting mining tenements in WA.
"For many years in WA data on bushland clearing has been hidden, or swept under that carpet as exemptions," she said,
"If the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation is to become the one-stop shop for all environmental approvals, including clearing permits, then it needs to be in control of all clearing permits issued across the state.
"WA's new one-stop shop for environmental approvals will need to look after all clearing proposals with rigor and consistency if it is to gain a community social licence in leading the custodianship of our water, bushland and climate."
The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety has been contacted for comment.
