Less than 40% of Australia’s nationally-listed threatened species have recovery plans in place to secure their long-term survival.
And close to 10% of listed threatened species are identified as requiring plans to manage their protection but the documents are either unfinished or haven’t been developed, according to data published by the environment and energy department.
Other critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species have plans that are years or decades out of date and contain no detail on what actions have been taken to ensure a species avoids extinction.
Conservationists want an overhaul of Australia’s national environment laws – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) act – to bring transparency and accountability to the country’s opaque system of species management.
“Nobody seems to have ultimate responsibility for protecting them,” said the Wilderness Society national director Lyndon Schneiders.
“We have this almost zombie-like system where the laws say you have to look after critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species – and we know the community support protecting our threatened species – but when it comes to implementation, it’s like a giant machine that generates no action.”
A recovery plan outlines a species’ population and distribution, threats to its survival – such as habitat loss, fire, disease and predators – and what actions should be taken to avoid extinctions. The documents are usually codeveloped by both federal and state departments and often includethe cost estimate of management actions for individual species.
State governments can also draft separate recovery plans for certain species that are listed as threatened at a state level.
Under the current national system for species protection, the environment and energy minister has the power to determine whether a threatened animal, plant or ecological community should have a recovery plan.
Changes to the EPBC act in 2006 put plans at the discretion of the minister, whereas before they had been mandatory for any species that received a threatened listing under the act.
Species without a recovery plan are now expected to have what is known as a conservation advice, which is typically a shorter document – sometimes fewer than five pages including references. It has no legal power to compel Australian governments to protect a species, they only have to consider it when making approvals under the EPBC act.
Conservation advices offer weaker legal protections than recovery plans. A recovery plan is binding on decisions made by the minister, a conservation advice is not.
Yet for those species that do have a recovery plan in place, there is no obligation on Australian governments to actually implement or fund it.
“Many recovery plans are just fantasy documents because they’re not implemented,” said Prof Lesley Hughes from the department of biological sciences at Macquarie University.
“Even if they’re good documents, unless there is a requirement on a jurisdiction to fund the actions, it’s just a piece of paper.”
Hughes said Australia’s national system of recovery plans and conservation advices was “a virtual black hole” in which it was often impossible to find out what plans had been activated, what had been funded and what the outcome was.
Research by Guardian Australia found fewer species were being granted the stronger protections of a recovery plan and some of our critically endangered animals were not receiving this level of protection.
The environment and energy department’s annual report for 2016-17 shows that of 1,885 listed threatened entities in Australia, just 712, or 38%, were covered by recovery plans that are in force.
A further 176 species and ecological communities were identified as requiring recovery plans but didn’t have them.
In the last financial year, only two new recovery plans were adopted, compared to 159 conservation advices.
Documents on the environment and energy department’s EPBC database raise further questions about how much is being done to protect some Australian species:
- Four of Australia’s seven critically endangered mammals are listed as requiring recovery plans but don’t have them either because they have never been done or have expired (Guardian has excluded the Christmas Island pipistrelle, which is extinct but still recorded on the EPBC list as critically endangered). One of these species – the southern bent-wing bat – has been identified as requiring a recovery plan since 2008
- The recovery plans for the remaining three mammals are all more than a decade old. The critically-endangered leadbeater’s possum has a recovery plan dated 1997, while a newer version remains in draft. The central rock rat, which the government this month uplisted from endangered to critically endangered, has a recovery plan dated 1999. The Christmas Island shrew, also uplisted from endangered to critically endangered this month, has not had its recovery plan updated since 2004, and it is unknown what, if any populations, still exist on the island.
- None of the recovery plans for Australia’s five critically endangered frogs are current. Two are more than five years old and three are more than a decade old.
- Some recovery plans are languishing in draft form. The grey-headed flying fox, listed as vulnerable under the EPBC act, has been identified as requiring a recovery plan since 2001. A document still hasn’t been finalised. The vulnerable green and golden bell frog has been listed as requiring a recovery plan since 2009 and no plan has been adopted.
- Species such as snails, shellfish and insects are largely listed under conservation advices. Twenty-five of the 28 critically endangered species in this category have a conservation advice instead of a recovery plan
- Some species appear to have seen little action at all. The King Island scrubtit, one of Australia’s most imperilled birds with an estimate of fewer than 50 remaining individuals, has neither a conservation advice nor a species-specific recovery plan and advocacy group BirdLife says it receives no funding at all.
A recent analysis by BirdLife also found only five of 67 birds that require plans have current ones. At least 10 critically-endangered and endangered birds that were supposed to have recovery plans didn’t, and most that did were out of date.
“An alarming number have the much less robust conservation advices,” BirdLife head of conservation Samantha Vine said.
“A good example is the thick-billed grasswren of north-west NSW. They are critically-endangered, with only a handful left, possibly no more than 10 birds. They have a conservation advice yet to the best of my knowledge there is absolutely nothing currently happening to address threats, such as overgrazing by livestock and pests, which we know led to the extinction of a closely related subspecies.”
Also unclear is which of the national recovery plans that have been developed have been authorised and funded at either a federal or state level. There is no requirement on governments to implement plans once they’re developed, something which is a source of frustration for conservationists.
One of the factors that led to two recent mammal extinctions – the Bramble Cay melomys and the Christmas Island pipistrelle – was governments moving too late to enact recovery plans that had been written.
And despite the requirement under the EPBC act for regular ministerial review of recovery plans, the environment and energy department’s public documentation does not track progress.
“There is no comprehensive ongoing monitoring of how recovery plans are being implemented or are having effect,” said John Woinarski, professor of conservation biology at Charles Darwin University.
The Coalition government has proposed introducing voluntary annual reporting by recovery teams on their progress.
But the environment and science community also want stronger laws to make protection of threatened animals and plants non-discretionary.
In the United States, biodiversity protection is enforced under the endangered species act. A recent review of birds found 85% of threatened birds had stabilised or increased their population as a result of protection under the act.
The report found that among the 120 bird species listed as threatened or endangered in the US since 1967, there had been average population increase of 624%.
“The report shows unequivocally that to protect and recover threatened species we must protect critical habitat as they do in the US. It also shows that recovery plans work when they are actually implemented. Over 90% of listed US birds have recovery plans,” Vine said.
In 2013, then environment minister Greg Hunt told Guardian Australia: “It has been frustrating to see numerous plans on threatened species that have sat on the shelf to gather dust” under previous governments.
Guardian Australia asked current environment and energy minister Josh Frydenberg, the environment and energy department and threatened species commissioner Sally Box if a list of recovery plans that had been funded, authorised and implemented could be provided. No response was supplied.
Scientists, conservationists and environment organisations are pushing for a return to mandatory recovery planning and greater coordination and transparency from federal and state governments on what is being done to ensure species survival and whether it has been successful. They also want an independent watchdog that can oversee environmental policy and force parliaments to take action to protect species if they aren’t already doing so.
Deakin University associate professor in wildlife ecology and conservation, Euan Ritchie, said the system also needed a “large and immediate increase in financial investment by the government for the environment and conservation”.
Analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation found it would cost about $200m a year to implement every recovery plan in Australia.
Stephen Garnett, professor of conservation and sustainable livelihoods at Charles Darwin University, said the benefit of recovery plans was that some had active recovery teams behind them or they had been able to attract networks of volunteers, researchers and scientists who cared enough to go out and implement them.
“I feel that recovery planning should be encouraged for all threatened species because development of the plan helps focus and coordinate action and increase the likelihood of funding,” he said.
“Conservation advices are less likely to generate action partly because they lack legislative teeth and partly because they are usually prepared without generating a network of interested people who can drive action.”
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