Fast-tracking extinction
New research reveals Australia's critical habitat laws are broken.
Australia’s national environment laws are failing to protect critical habitat that is crucial to saving our endangered species, a new report from the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), WWF, the Wilderness Society, and the University of Queensland, has found.
The new research reveals that Australia is lagging countries like the United States in preserving habitat vital for the protection of rare animals, plants, reptiles, fish and birds.
The research reveals:
Just five places are protected as critical habitat in Australia, the last in 2005.
There are over 100 threatened species whose critical habitat has been identified as essential to their survival, but has not been protected.
There is no legal penalty for wilfully damaging critical habitat on non-Commonwealth land.