SYDNEY (29 March 2025)—NSW Government scientists have issued a damning condemnation of the state’s shark nets, stating that they could find ‘no evidence’ that shark nets decrease fatalities. The Response to the Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program 2023/2024 Annual Performance Report, was released late on Friday by the NSW Government’s...
Since recovery plans, conservation advice and management strategies have been implemented for shark and ray species listed as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) there have been no measurable improvements in their status.
They all remain threatened with extinction; none have been downgraded since being listed and several have had their threatened status upgraded by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). As a statutory 10-year review of the EPBC Act has recently been announced it is timely to consider how to make the next 10 years a decade in which the status of threatened sharks is dramatically improved.
