<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/17/nsw-government-says-states-biodiversity-in-crisis-as-it-pledges-first-steps-to-reverse-decline>
"The New South Wales government says the state’s biodiversity is in crisis and
must be put on a path to recovery to reverse the decline of beloved species and
ecosystems.
The environment minister, Penny Sharpe, has released the government’s “first
steps” in responding to a major review of the state’s nature laws, saying: “We
cannot ignore the truth: biodiversity in NSW is in crisis.”
The Minns government is proposing to develop a new nature strategy that would
be enshrined in law and set targets for conservation and restoration, including
landscape restoration, species recovery and addressing threats to nature.
Sharpe said the government would also amend state laws by the end of this year
to fulfil its promise to reform NSW’s biodiversity offsets scheme after a 2021
Guardian Australia investigation uncovered serious problems that triggered
several inquiries.
“Our goal must be to leave nature better off than we have found it.”
Sharpe said the response, which fully or partially accepts 49 out of 58
recommendations from the 2023 review led by the former treasury secretary Ken
Henry, set out immediate priorities and “is the start of concerted action,
reform, investment”.
Henry’s review found the state’s environment laws would not succeed without
substantial changes and warned that half of the species under threat in NSW
were on course to become extinct within the next 100 years.
After the review was released last year, he called for the natural environment
to be made the top priority in government policy and legislation.
Henry told
Guardian Australia on Tuesday that the government’s response was a
“serious attempt” to tackle the problems identified in his review and
demonstrated it understood the scale of the nature crisis.
But he said many of the government’s proposed actions would take a long time to
deliver and they stopped short of putting laws that protected and enhanced
nature ahead of other land management concerns."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
