According to new research more than 7.7 million hectares of habitat has been cleared since the introduction of Australia’s national environment law, but 93 per cent of that land was not referred to the federal government for assessment.
A major study, led by researchers from the University of Queensland and three environment organisations, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), WWF Australia and the Wilderness Society, warns that Australia’s high extinction rate will increase “without a fundamental change” in how environment laws are enforced.
In compiling the report scientists used publicly available spatial data to quantify the amount of clearing of potential habitat for 1638 listed threatened species and ecological communities, which are groups of species that form a single habitat, between 2000 and 2017.
They used the federal government referral record to calculate how much of the clearing had been referred to the government for assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, which came into force in 2000 .
“These are the species threatened with extinction,” Michelle Ward, the study’s lead author from the University of Queensland told Guardian Australia.
“If we don’t stop their habitat loss, they’re going to go extinct.”
Queensland was the location of the highest levels of clearing; the state had nine of the 10 species that lost the most potential habitat.
A statutory review of the EPBC Act is due to begin this year, and Ms Ward said the researchers would be submitting comments based on their research.
Their paper said Australia’s national environment laws have been “ineffective” at preventing habitat loss and called for amendments that require critical habitat, where possible, to be mapped and monitored for threatened species and ecological communities, and for protection of that habitat to be enforced.
“We think that the act should be amended so that critical habitat is mapped, available to stakeholders and fully protected from further destruction,” Ms Ward said.
James Trezise, a policy analyst at the ACF and a co-author on the study, told Guardian Australia the research highlighted how national laws had “systematically failed to protect threatened species and their habitats”.
“To potentially have more than 93 per cent of threatened species habitat loss unregulated is completely unacceptable and demonstrates a massive compliance failure under the EPBC Act,” he said.
“These findings should be a wake-up call to the federal government as it gears up to review the EPBC Act and as it enters negotiations for a new global framework for protecting nature through the United Nations.”
New post-2020 targets for nature are due to be established next year under the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Another co-author on the study, Professor James Watson, of the University of Queensland and the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Guardian Australia a review of the EPBC Act was essential.
“Australia is about to get a boot up the arse with the global post-2020 biodiversity agenda because the core part of that is stopping species extinction and Australia is doing dismally,” he said.
“It’s globally embarrassing. The quicker we get a review and get it working, the better.”
The study examined two types of habitat, forests and woodlands, and excluded clearing that had occurred before the EPBC Act came into force and any clearing that was due to natural causes such as fire.
They calculated that the land cleared included 7.7m hectares of potential habitat for terrestrial threatened species, 64,000 hectares of habitat for terrestrial migratory species, and 330,000 hectares for threatened ecological communities.
The researchers found that clearing had affected potential habitat for 84 per cent, or 1390, of the species studied and that the overwhelming majority of that clearing (93 per cent) had not been referred to the federal government for scrutiny under the EPBC Act.
“This noncompliance means that potential habitat for terrestrial threatened species, terrestrial migratory species and threatened ecological communities have been lost without assessment, regulation or enforcement under the EPBC Act,” they wrote.
EcoNews is an independent publication that relies on contributions from its readers.
WE’RE BUILDING A PLATFORM WITH A CLEAR FOCUS ON THE ENVIRONMENT, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL GOOD. CONTRIBUTE AND TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE AN IMPACT.
