Another 13 animals and plants have been added to Australia’s list of threatened species, sparking renewed calls for the federal government to quickly overhaul the country’s nature laws.
The species newly listed as at risk include the pig-nosed turtle (listed as vulnerable), the Dalhousie catfish (critically endangered), Pugh’s sphagnum frog (endangered) and the Coffs Harbour Fontainea, a rainforest tree (critically endangered). Other species are freshwater fish, lizards, flowering shrubs, a daisy and an orchid species.
It increases the number of species recognised as threatened with extinction in Australia to 2,224. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said each of the new animal additions had been affected by habitat destruction or degradation, and the climate crisis was worsening their plight.
Several species were badly affected by the catastrophic black summer bushfires of 2019-20.
Darcie Carruthers, an ACF nature campaigner, said the expanding threatened species list showed the national nature laws were “powerless to stop Australian plants and animals being wilfully destroyed”.
“Forests, lizards, bush, wetlands and frogs need nature laws with teeth and a truly independent Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to enforce them,” she said.
The Albanese government has introduced legislation to create a national EPA and a second body responsible for data collection, Environment Information Australia, but delayed a promised re-writing of the national environment laws to an unspecified date.
Newly listed species include the Hunter Valley delma, a legless lizard that was not recognised as a species until 2022. Carruthers said more than 90% of its known range in the Hunter Valley has been damaged by open cut mining and agriculture. She said the Coffs Harbour Fontainea tree was found in only two pockets of bushland owned by Transport for NSW, and one of the sites was earmarked to be cleared to make way for a Coffs Harbour road bypass.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the government was determined to better protect “our precious plants and animals”. She has overseen decisions on 241 threatened species and eight ecological communities since taking on the portfolio in May 2022. More than half were affected by bushfires.
“Giving our native species better protection under the law by listing them on the threatened species list helps, but that’s not all we are doing,” she said.
She said Labor was “cracking down on the feral animals and weeds killing our native species” and establishing an EPA that would be “a tough cop on the beat with strong powers and penalties”.
Separately on Tuesday, Plibersek said the government was worried a deadly strain of bird flu could push some bird species towards extinction if it arrived in Australia. In a speech to a Zoo and Aquarium Association conference, she said the new H5 variant – a highly pathogenic strain that has wreaked havoc on populations overseas – “is coming for us”.
“We are worried about the extinction risk of birds that are in captive breeding programs, where numbers are already critically low in the wild and there’s little capacity to cope with a new disease,” she said. “We are also worried that species in the wild that are currently doing well – or travelling along OK – will become vulnerable to extinction due to mass deaths.
Plibersek said the government was taking the risk seriously and there needed to be an “all-in” approach across government and private organisations to minimise the threat.
She said avian influenza could affect mammals as well as birds. “We know that seals and sea lions are at particularly high risk,” she said. “The spring bird migration from the northern hemisphere in the coming months is a particularly dangerous time.”
