{"id":107899,"date":"2025-10-29T23:50:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/107899\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T23:50:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:50:21","slug":"biodiversity-is-in-catastrophic-decline-here-are-three-ways-to-ensure-australias-conservation-law-actually-works-atticus-fleming-and-andrew-macintosh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/107899\/","title":{"rendered":"Biodiversity is in catastrophic decline. Here are three ways to ensure Australia\u2019s conservation law actually works | Atticus Fleming and Andrew Macintosh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s parliament will soon consider proposed reforms to federal environmental laws<\/a> \u2013 known as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Unfortunately, signals from the government suggest this may be another reform process that fails to deliver the progress we need \u2013 despite everyone agreeing that Australia\u2019s biodiversity is in catastrophic decline.<\/p>\n

When introduced, the EPBC Act was a historic reform by a conservative government. For the first time since federation, the Australian parliament exercised its full suite of constitutional powers to regulate environmentally harmful actions on all tenures.<\/p>\n

The EPBC Act gave the federal environment minister direct control over actions affecting \u201cmatters of national environmental significance\u201d, which include threatened species (like koalas, potoroos, bandicoots, swift and superb parrots and more than 1,400 plant species) and our world and national heritage sites. Early litigation highlighted the potential of the act \u2013 for example, a conservation group in north Queensland secured an injunction to prevent lychee farmers using large electric grids to kill spectacled flying foxes.<\/p>\n

Importantly, the act established a framework that could evolve. Notably, it allows for regulations to be made to add new \u201ctriggers\u201d (which dictate when environmentally harmful activities need approval) and to deem certain classes of actions to be within existing triggers.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the act has failed to realise its potential. There are three main reasons for this.<\/p>\n

First, the commonwealth bureaucracy has failed to enforce the existing laws. Actions that breach the act have been taken by proponents without attracting any sanctions. This includes land-clearing that has routinely not been referred for approval, despite having significant impacts on threatened species.<\/p>\n

Second, mechanisms in the act that could have expanded its scope, and provided certainty about its scope, have not been utilised. Regulations could have been made to deem land-clearing over a specified threshold as requiring approval. A climate change trigger could have been added at any time \u2013 indeed, back in 2000, a draft climate change trigger was published by the Howard government but never enacted.<\/p>\n

Third, the exemption for native forest logging should have been phased out. Instead, it was extended.<\/p>\n

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If the Howard government could propose a climate trigger in 2000, it can hardly be described as radical in 2025<\/p>\n

The reform process appears not to be addressing any of these challenges. Unless a reset occurs, the reforms cannot deliver substantive additional environment protection. Australia\u2019s extinction rate \u2013 already one of the highest in the world \u2013 will get worse.<\/p>\n

The highest priority for the reforms must be to ensure land-clearing is properly regulated. Since the act commenced in 2000, more than 11.5m hectares of native forests have been cleared, including more than 3m hectares of remnant (intact) native vegetation. Amendments should prohibit the clearing of remnant vegetation, other than in exceptional circumstances where parliament decides the clearing is needed for an essential project. All clearing of mature regrowth (previously cleared vegetation that has regenerated and not been disturbed for 15 to 25 years) should require approval if it exceeds a specified area threshold. And any clearing should only be approved if its impacts on threatened species are fully offset through the restoration of cleared or degraded examples of the same ecosystem.<\/p>\n

We suggest three simple KPIs for the reform process. Within 12 months, clearing of remnant vegetation should be near zero and there should be an initial 50% reduction in mature regrowth clearing. The native forest logging exemption should be removed. And all projects likely to directly or indirectly result in 50,000 tonnes or more of greenhouse gas emissions a year \u2013 on average or at their peak \u2013 should trigger the act and all emissions from these projects should be subject to a carbon price that aligns with the aims of the Paris agreement. If the Howard government could propose a climate trigger in 2000, it can hardly be described as radical in 2025.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, rather than fixing the gaps in the triggers and what is regulated, the reform process has focused instead on the introduction of \u201cnational standards\u201d and the creation of an environment protection authority (EPA) to oversee the enforcement of the act\u2019s requirements.<\/p>\n

Standards will be important in limiting the broad discretion that now exists when approval decisions are made. However, such standards are of limited value if the projects that pose the biggest environmental risk \u2013 such as land-clearing \u2013 are not regulated. Similarly, while there is value in a properly constituted and independent EPA, this is also not the main game. Failure to address the scope of the act means the EPA will be a mere observer as land-clearing continues unabated, native forests are logged and our biodiversity continues to decline.<\/p>\n

Real reform means that, in five years\u2019 time, we can celebrate measurable improvements rather than read another report on how the act has failed to play its role in reversing the decline in Australia\u2019s environment.<\/p>\n

Atticus Fleming AM is the chief executive of the Great Southern Land Conservancy and was previously the head of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife<\/a> Service. He was an adviser to the Howard government environment minister Robert Hill when the EPBC Act was introduced. Prof Andrew Macintosh is co-director of the Australian National University\u2019s Centre for Environmental Markets. He was a member of the expert panel for the second independent review of the EPBC Act (Samuel review) in 2019-20 and a member of the national environmental standards working group in 2022-23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s parliament will soon consider proposed reforms to federal environmental laws \u2013 known as the Environment Protection and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-107899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}