A landholder in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria has received a permit to clear an area equal to the size of the Ord Irrigation Scheme in Western Australia.
The permit to clear 28,000 hectares for irrigated crops follows changes to Queensland's native vegetation laws last year to increase agricultural production.
The clearing site is on Strathmore Station, a cattle grazing operation on the Gilbert River.
It currently grows dryland sorghum, but the permit, combined with a recent water allocation, means it can grow large-scale irrigated fodder crops.
The owner of Strathmore Station, Scott Harris, says it's the only way forward for the region.
"If we got going at full capacity, we could be looking at 200 jobs on Strathmore alone, then you add on the flow-on effects to the local community."
The Wilderness Society says the negative impacts of this land clearing project could far outweigh the benefits.
Campaigner Karen Touchie says the government shouldn't be allowed to approve large-scale land clearing without public consultation.
"We only stumbled across this application by accident. We don't know how much land is getting cleared in Queensland because the government isn't required to notify the public about the applications.
"There could be land clearing occurring all over and we simply have no idea what's going on."
Mr Harris rejects claims that the development would harm the environment.
"We're very, very careful not to go near wetlands, buffer zones along rivers and watercourses. All those buffer zones vary, but if people get this idea that we're out to clear every tree, that's nonsense.
"It's just bad publicity brought about by the green movement."
Environmental groups are not the only ones concerned about the permit.
Landscape ecologist Clive McAlpine also has serious reservations.
"I'm concerned because this region hasn't experienced this scale of clearing before, so what we are going to see is wildlife habitat destroyed.
"That region is rich in savannah birds. Their habitat is going to be destroyed, and you're going to get a lot of sediment going into the rivers and down into the Gulf."
Despite his concerns, Professor McAlpine says there have been far larger land clearing projects in Australian history.
"It's not as big at the Brigalow Scheme, which cleared three or four million hectares back in the 60s and 70s.
"In more recent times, there was 750,000 hectares cleared in 1999 when the Queensland Government was trying to wind back the land clearing and there was panic clearing as a result."
The Queensland Minister for Natural Resources, Andrew Cripps, insists all applications for land clearing must meet strict environmental and economic criteria.
He says no changes have been made to the public notification process in recent years.
"There's never been any requirement for a public notification process for vegetation management activity, but what I can say is that applications received for high-value agriculture developments are very rigorously assessed."