Conservation Policy

The laws surrounding what is permissible for threatened species habitat and vegetation management have received a lot of focus in Australia and Queensland in the past decade, with the 20-year statutory review of the national environment legislation the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). The EPBC Act was found to have not been fulfilling its purpose in protecting biodiversity, and the Wildlife Conservation Lab and colleagues have investigated the implications of the EPBC Act on threatened species habitat (Reside et al. 2019; Ward et al. 2019), and particularly for species listed as Vulnerable (Simmonds et al. 2019). This research found that large losses of habitat had been recorded for threatened species, with 84% of threatened species losing habitat since the Act came into effect (Ward et al. 2019), and that very few protections were offered to Vulnerable species to prevent their conservation status from further decline (Simmonds et al. 2019). The Endangered Southern Black-throated Finch was particularly affected, with very little efforts to avoid habitat loss taken (Reside et al. 2019; Ward et al. 2019). Queensland’s Vegetation Management Act was the focus of parliamentary enquiries after successive state governments changed the policy around vegetation clearing, resulting in Queensland having some of the greatest rates of clearing in the world (Reside et al. 2017). Compiling the data on the outcomes of these policies and legislation can inform how policy reform can improve outcomes for biodiversity.