One of Australia’s largest conservation organisations has launched legal action alleging that successive federal environment ministers failed to meet their obligation to create recovery plans for native species threatened with extinction.
The Wilderness Society (TWS) filed the proceedings in the federal court on Monday.
Eleven endangered species, including the greater glider (Petauroides volans), the ghost bat (Macroderma gigas) and the Baudin’s cockatoo (Zanda baudinii), will feature in the case.
Recovery plans set out action needed to bring species back from the brink of extinction and put them on a better trajectory.
TWS, represented by Environmental Justice Australia, will allege that the failure by environment ministers to make recovery plans for threatened plants and animals that had been identified as requiring them was unlawful.
“This case will shine a light on the legal and moral duties of current and future environment ministers to do their job to help Aussie wildlife beat extinction,” said the TWS biodiversity policy and campaign manager, Sam Szoke-Burke.
“For decades, government after government has failed to make recovery plans for hundreds of threatened species that are in dire need of better care.”
The case is asking the court to compel the environment minister to make recovery plans for the 11 species named in the application.
Under Australia’s national environmental laws, the minister decides whether a species requires a recovery plan or not. If the minister decides a species does require one, the plan must usually be made within three years.
Once a recovery plan is enacted, the minister must not make decisions that would be considered contrary to its goals and actions.
The legal challenge follows long-held concerns about a backlog of unfinished and undeveloped plans for species including the greater glider, which has required a recovery plan since 2016 but has no plan in place.
“Recovery plans are legally required,” Szoke-Burke said.
News of the legal action comes as the government is expected to add 21 plants and animals, including the Western Victoria blackfish and the Australian snubfin dolphin, to Australia’s list of threatened species. A further six species on the list will be upgraded to a more urgent conservation status.
Guardian Australia has reported extensively on the failure by successive governments to make recovery plans within the required time frames. An auditor general’s report in 2022 found only 2% of recovery plans had been completed within their statutory timeframe since 2013.
In 2020 the federal environment department told a Senate estimates hearing that 170 plants, animals and habitats were waiting for recovery plans.
To reduce the backlog, the previous Coalition government had the threatened species scientific committee reassess whether some species still required a plan and, in 2022, scrapped the requirement for almost 200 plants, animals and habitats.
The golden sun moth was one of the species the minister at that time decided still required a recovery plan. The moth has been identified as requiring a plan since 2009. The government’s threatened fauna list shows that plan still has not been made.
In addition to the greater glider, the ghost bat and the Baudin’s cockatoo, eight other species will feature in the TWS case: the Australian grayling, the Australian lungfish, Carnaby’s black cockatoo, the forest red-tailed black cockatoo, the red goshawk, the sandhill dunnart and the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle.
Some of these species previously had plans but those plans have expired and new ones have not been adopted.
“Too many of Australia’s most iconic and threatened species simply don’t have recovery plans,” said an Environmental Justice Australia senior specialist lawyer, Ellen Maybery, adding: “Our client hopes this case will set a precedent that compels all future environment ministers to create recovery plans and pull these unique species back from the brink of extinction.”
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said she could not comment on details of the case because the matter is before the federal court.
According to the minister’s office, since June 2022 Plibersek has made 18 recovery plans.
