The EPBC reform process to date has primarily focussed on assessments and approvals, but to
stop extinctions and restore ecological health, Australia needs to:
- Protect and restore threatened species and ecological communities – known as ‘recovery’
- Eliminate or reduce the major threats to nature – known as ‘threat abatement’
Even if recovery processes were optimal, the current fragmented and limited focus on threat
abatement within the EPBC Act and government priorities leads to continuous growth in
threatened species lists, ongoing extinctions, landscape degradation and significant economic
costs. - Reforms of the EPBC Act will fail to stem the loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation
unless they also significantly strengthen Australia’s capacity to systematically identify, prevent
and abate threats to nature – especially invasive species.