Environment laws inefficient, failing to protect threatened species, audit finds

A key piece of environmental legislation is failing to protect threatened species from extinction, a damning new report from the Australian National Audit Office has found.

The auditor-general’s report, tabled yesterday, found the Environment Department’s administration of threatened flora and fauna under the Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation (EPBC) Act is inefficient and only partially effective, hampered by long delays and inadequate monitoring. 

The act requires the environment minister to make a list of threatened species and communities. It also provides for conservation plans to be made for those species, including “recovery plans” which, at the determination of the minister, provide steps to halt their decline.

The ANAO report found that administration to be inadequate. Just 2% of recovery plans had been completed within the statutory time frame since 2013, and timeliness had deteriorated over the last decade during a period where species extinction has accelerated in Australia. The average time it took to establish a recovery plan was 2355 days, or over six years. Last year, listing assessments for threatened species took an average of 940 days to complete.

“The administration of threatened species and ecological communities under the EPBC Act is partly effective. The department is unable to demonstrate it is efficient,” the ANAO report said.

“There is limited evidence that desired outcomes are being achieved, due to the department’s lack of monitoring, reporting and support for the implementation of conservation advice, recovery plans and threat abatement plans.”

The report also noted that a “workforce and budget reduction strategy” implemented by the department had taken a toll, with internal notes conceding that resourcing constraints made it impossible to review recovery plans in time.

Meanwhile, the audit found the department had “limited effective arrangements” to support the implementation of conservation advice and those recovery plans. No documented methodology existed for how plans for different threatened species were prioritised, and no process to consult with states and territories to establish cooperative processes to support conservation efforts. 

The Australian Conservation Foundation’s national biodiversity policy adviser Sophie Power said the audit revealed legislation was “failing our unique threatened species”.

“The main index indicates that threatened species populations have declined around 60% in the 20 years since the EPBC Act came into effect,” she said.

“Repeated deep cuts to the department’s budget have not helped matters. Australia’s threatened species desperately need stronger national environmental laws and an independent regulator to enforce them.”

Labor’s environment and water spokeswoman Terri Butler called the ANAO’s report “scathing”.

“Federal Labor has been calling out this government’s failures to deliver recovery plans,” she said. “The most high-profile overdue recovery plan is the one for the recently uplisted koala. The koala recovery plan is seven years overdue.

“If this government can’t even complete a recovery plan for the koala — one of Australia’s most iconic species — how can they be trusted to look out for other, less-known Australian species and ecological communities?”

Environment Minister Sussan Ley’s office said the department had accepted all six of the audit’s recommendations, which included arrangements to ensure conservation advice, recovery plans and threat abatement plans are regularly updated.

“We welcome the ANAO report’s acknowledgment of the minister’s $200m bushfire response, the minister’s adoption of a more strategic response to emerging threats and modernising our approach to conservation planning.

“Since 2020, minister Ley has been responsible for the delivery of 130 new or updated conservation advices, significant progress on recovery plans covering 42 entities, and the conservation status of more than 650 species being assessed.”

But Butler said the report was further evidence of the Morrison government’s record on environmental issues, and its slowness to act.

“It is clear that the Morrison-Joyce government has hollowed out biodiversity conservation over its near-decade in office,” she said. “This government’s record is one of cuts and delays.”