As a former environment official, I’ve been involved with the EPBC Act for more than 20 years. But I was still shocked by the scathing report card.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on EPBC Act
Displaying 41 - 60 of 61 articles
In my 24 years of research, including visiting most sites, I’ve yet to see a successful rehabilitation case study of Australia’s uranium mines.
I was a federal environment official for 13 years. Streamlining approvals for big infrastructure projects is a big environmental risk, unless it’s done properly.
It’s a stunning win for a small community group that relied on crowd funding to cover legal costs.
Our environmental laws work in the favour of mining interests – even when the industry itself claims otherwise.
New research reveals how governments ignored decades’ worth of scientific advice on how the Adani mine threatened to damage precious water supplies.
Environment Minister Sussan Ley has announced a review of Australia’s nature laws. The poor state of our biodiversity shows we must do a better job of protecting the places we love.
Just one out of a possible 775 development approvals was refused on the basis that it would harm the southern black-throated finch, despite this endangered species being protected by federal law.
Newly revealed documents show the Commonwealth government approved a controversial tourism plan for Tasmania’s World Heritage wilderness without assessing it against federal conservation legislation.
The WA government has announced plans to reclassify dingoes as no different to wild dogs - paving the way for them to be culled at will. But dingoes are unique and deserve to be recognised as such.
Most of Australia’s plants and animals are found nowhere else on Earth. This remarkable biodiversity requires a bolder, brighter conservation vision.
Australia’s federal environment laws are inadequate to halt Australia’s alarming rates of land clearing and species loss. A more robust set of laws are urgently needed.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s proposed changes to Australia’s national environment act will significantly reduce judicial oversight on environmental decisions. Here’s why that matters.
Activists want the Carmichael mine stopped. But what does the law say?
The government is set to restrict green groups’ right to challenge environmental approvals in court. But the law isn’t doing its job in protecting Australia’s plants and animals anyway.
As a landowner, can you veto a coal seam gas development? And does the environment minister have the power to say no to coal mines?
Both industry and environmental groups need more certainty over the government’s approvals process. But the recent hectic rhetoric has given them less certainty - and that could be bad for both sides.
The government plans to change the law so green groups don’t automatically qualify to mount legal challenges against environmental approvals. That would make it much harder for green watchdogs to act.
Chalk it up as a rare conservation win: humpback whales have bounced back so strongly since the whaling era that there is no longer a need to include them on Australia’s official threatened species list.
Dead whales can cost beachside ratepayers a lot to clean up. The alternative is to tow them away before they wash up - but the legal question of who does the job is far more complex than it sounds.
Top contributors
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Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Law, Australian National University
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Professor in Conservation Science, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne
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Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
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Deputy Director, Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law and Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney
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Professor of Environmental Management, The University of Queensland
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Professor, Deakin Law School, Deakin University
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Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning, Leader, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT University
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Associate Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland
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Senior Lecturer, Public Sector Management, UNSW Sydney
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Senior Research Fellow, Environmental Science, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University
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Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of the Environment, The University of Queensland
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Lecturer, The University of Queensland
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Adjunct Asssociate Professor, James Cook University
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Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University
