Australia’s federal environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), is the national law responsible for protecting our wildlife. The Australian Government has announced that in 2023 they will undertake major reforms to this law to ensure deliver stronger environmental outcomes in line with new National Environmental Standards. This is a welcome but it’s in the detail that we will see whether the reforms will really deliver for nature.
To inform our response to these laws, we have worked with lawyers at the Environmental Defenders Office, we have developed a series of papers setting out the federal legal changes needed to protect wildlife and their habitat:
We are also a co-founder and active lead member of the Places You Love alliance. Through this alliance we work together with colleagues in the environmental sector in support of national environment laws that demand strong leadership from our federal government and empower independent institutions that properly protect and recover threatened species and their habitats.
At a state and territory level, we take every opportunity to engage in the improvement of environmental decision making, particularly when it involves inhumane treatment of animals.