Three months after agreeing to a record $55 million conservation undertaking, US mining giant Alcoa is back under federal investigation — this time over land clearing at its Willowdale mine south of Perth, in the same northern jarrah forest belt where its operations have already destroyed habitat of black cockatoos, quokkas, numbats and other protected species.
The fresh probe was disclosed in talking points prepared for federal ministers ahead of the February settlement covering Alcoa's neighbouring Huntly mine, and only became public this week. Federal officials confirmed the Willowdale investigation is ongoing and would not comment further while it is under way.
What's already been settled
In February, Alcoa entered into a $55 million enforceable undertaking with the Commonwealth over clearing at Huntly, the mine that feeds the Pinjarra alumina refinery. Roughly 318 hectares were cleared there between 2023 and 2024 while the company was already under investigation — conduct federal regulators have characterised as a deliberate repeat breach of national environment law.
A separate $15 million undertaking covers 1,777 hectares cleared at Huntly between 2019 and 2023, an area equivalent to four Kings Parks. As part of the broader package, Alcoa has been required to spend at least $40 million on land purchases by the end of 2026 to offset a 3,000-hectare liability, and to lift annual forest rehabilitation to 1,000 hectares by 2027.
Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt described the deal at the time as "the largest conservation-focused commitment of its kind."
Why Willowdale matters
The Willowdale mine, in the same northern jarrah forest belt, supplies Alcoa's Wagerup refinery — the site of a government-backed gallium plant. Alcoa has held bauxite leases across the Darling Range since the early 1960s and has stripped an estimated 280 square kilometres of jarrah forest in that time.
The protected species known to use habitat in the affected areas include Baudin's black-cockatoo, Carnaby's black-cockatoo, the forest red-tailed black-cockatoo (or karrak), the numbat — Western Australia's fauna emblem — the quokka, the chuditch (or western quoll) and the woylie. All are listed under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Conservation groups push back
WA Forest Alliance director Jess Boyce said the new probe undermined the case for the deal struck in February. "The Federal Government not only let this continue for two years, rather than halt clearing, but has now given Alcoa an exemption despite proving it can't be trusted," she said.
Alcoa was granted an 18-month national-interest exemption to continue clearing while a strategic assessment of its operations is completed. Greens WA spokesperson Jess Beckerling called the exemption "a special free pass from federal nature laws," and said the broader pattern showed "a serious problem in this country with multinational corporations destroying places we love and our laws and governments being completely inadequate to rein them in."
Alcoa has previously said its operations have "historically been undertaken in accordance with WA legislation" and that the company had "always maintained we were operating under grandfathering provisions."
What happens next
The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has not set a public timeline for the Willowdale investigation. Any second enforcement action would land while public consultation on Alcoa's broader expansion plans is still live — the EPA has received more than 59,000 submissions on those plans, the bulk of them opposed.
For Perth, the stakes go beyond habitat: the Huntly mine sits in the catchment of the Serpentine drinking water dam, and the proposed expansion would extend Alcoa's footprint further into the city's water supply zone.
Reporting drawn from The Guardian and Boiling Cold.