The EPBC Act is limited in its ability to manage key threats or quickly respond to acute threats such as bushfires, biosecurity incursions or other natural disasters.
Changes are needed to support more effective planning that accounts for cumulative impacts and past and future key threats and build environmental resilience in a changing climate.
10-year review of the EPBC Act (2020)
Australia needs a comprehensive, authoritative list of key threats to nature. Decisions about which threats meet the criteria under the EPBC Act are scientific in nature and should be made by scientific experts. Removing ministerial discretion will make the listing process more credible, consistent and efficient. The appropriate body for determining listings is the Threatened Species Scientific Committee or an equivalent expert body. The option for public nomination of threats should be retained to ensure that emerging or poorly known threats are also assessed
If a threat is serious enough to be listed under the EPBC Act, it warrants a national abatement response. The response options should be flexible, encompassing planning and policy, to enable abatement of different types of threats.
Stage 1: For all key threatening processes (high level threats) and environmental threats of national significance (specific threats), develop a threat response statement. This should be an independent, science-based statement of what actions (management, research) and instruments (plans, policies, regulations) are needed to abate the threat, specifying the urgency, benefits and likely costs of abatement.
Stage 2: For key threatening processes, develop strategic national plans specifying the intended abatement responses by federal, state and territory governments. Certain aspects of key threatening processes may warrant standalone national plans, such as a national restoration plan (in response to habitat destruction) and a plan for protecting climate refugia (in response to climate change). For priority environmental threats of national significance, develop threat abatement plans or action plans, unless abatement can best be achieved in other ways such as regulatory or policy changes. Planning should be flexible, able to address partial aspects of a threat and encompass actions to address non-environmental impacts.
Stage 3: Implement strategic national plans and threat abatement plans, including by:
This will facilitate federal regulation of activities that significantly exacerbate threats to nature and intervention when threats are intensifying and need urgent action. Achieving abatement will require the federal government to exercise its constitutional powers when there are regulatory failures by some states and territories, as exemplified by land clearing and the high-risk use of invasive species.
A taskforce with expertise and stakeholder representation (government and non-government) is essential to drive implementation of threat abatement plans. This has been a consistent feature of effective plans.
A national biodiversity monitoring and reporting framework (underpinned by standards) should include a focus on the status of each major threat, whether or not it is subject to a threat abatement plan, and the status of biodiversity impacted by each threat. Reporting requirements should be harmonised across projects and programs to enable tracking of national progress.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians throughout Australia and their connections to land and sea. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
Threats to Nature is mainly funded by the Australian Communities Foundation’s Impact Fund. The project is hosted by the Invasive Species Council.
We are grateful for the advice of our working group members (Birdlife Australia, Bush Heritage Australia, Ecological Society of Australia, Humane Society International, TierraMar and WWF-Australia) and for the support from our volunteers.
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Dear Project Team,
[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.]
I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.
The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.
The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.
This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.
Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.
Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.
Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.
I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.
Dear Project Team,
[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.]
I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.
The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.
The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.
This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.
Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.
Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.
Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.
I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.