The Queensland Government has successfully repealed the state's Wild Rivers Act - a move conservationists say will take a major toll on some of the world’s last free-flowing rivers.

They claim the Wild Rivers Act, which protected natural rivers from industrial development, has been replaced with a regulatory “dog’s breakfast”.

The Newman government says Queensland is moving into line with a Federal Court decision on river protections earlier this year.

The state’s Environment Minister, Andrew Powell, claims that a new framework will protect the sensitive river systems.

He says all former Wild River sites will now be declared strategic environmental areas.

Those areas will fall under new rules for planning decisions, local government schemes, and regional interest development approvals at the state level.

Powell says the changes reduce complexity for development in local communities while maintaining environmental values, but the Wilderness Society disputes the final point.

Environmental defenders have called the repeal a tragedy, saying it will remove vital buffer zones created under the Wild Rivers Act to protect rivers from strip mining, intensive agriculture, in-stream dams and other destructive activities.

“The repeal of the Wild Rivers Act will once again expose sensitive, pristine rivers to destructive development threats,” the society's Queensland campaign manager Tim Seelig told News Corp on Wednesday.

“In its place, the Newman government will run with a dog's breakfast of weaker policies, regulation and ever-changing maps which will operate without any parliamentary oversight and will lead to arbitrary decision-making.”

Earlier this year, the Federal Court ruled that development restrictions on the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart basins, made under Wild Rivers Act of 2005, were invalid.

“The court decision did not overturn the Wild Rivers Act as the government has attempted to claim,” Queensland opposition environment spokesperson Jackie Trad said.

She said the court ruling identified some “process issues” with the declaration of those three rivers, but it did not undermine declarations for the Wenlock, the gulf and channel country, and Hinchinbrook and Fraser islands.