Workshops at the Biodiversity Summit 2006

Stream 1:  A User’s Perspective

Karen Alexander, Victorian National Parks Association and the EDO:  VNPA's experience of Victorian examples of protection, or otherwise, of listed threatened species and communities: buloke woodlands and red-tailed black cockatoos.

Ray Maino, Threatened Ecosystems Network :  Nominations under the EPBC Act – our experiences.  The process of making a nomination, the approval process, and the lessons we have learnt, especially relating to the nomination of Victorian Westerns Plains Basalt Grassy Woodland as a threatened vegetation community.

Vanessa Bleyer, Lawyers for Forests : Applying for emergency listing under the EPBC Act.

Judy Lambert, Community Solutions : Overcoming clashes between environment protection and biodiversity conservation.  Based on Community Solutions extensive experience in community consultation and engagement processes, and more recently in conflict management, it is clear that there are benefits in early engagement between the parties where biodiversity conservation is likely to come into conflict with other aspects of environmental protection.  The extent to which the EPBC Act and the policies and processes that surround it can be used to enhance consensus-building for biodiversity conservation will be a component of the workshop.

Stream 2:  Threatening Processes

Louis Delacretaz, Greens’ Biodiversity Spokesperson:  Does the current legislative framework protect high conservation value forest on private land.  Upper Yarra and Dandenongs Environmental Council experience of attempting to protect forest on private land including nationally threatened species within the current legislated framework.  Case study of an application to log 99ha of private land zoned Rural Conservation.  The land also has Botanical and Zoological overlays recognizing the importance of the site. Animals identified include the threatened Powerful Owl as well as numerous species listed under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.  This site has what is considered the highest protection able to be applied by a Victorian council planning scheme - yet the owner is still able to take an application to log 99 ha to VCAT.

Louise Crossley, Macquarie Island Station Leader 2000 and 2003: An island of hope for biodiversity recovery?  Problems and solutions for land degradation by feral rabbits on subantarctic Macquarie Island.  Rabbits were introduced to Macquarie Island in the 1870s as a food source for sealing parties.  Control using myxoma virus during the 1980s and 90s decimated the population and kept it low.  This virus is no longer available.  Lack of control measures, coupled with global warming and the successful eradication of feral cats on the island, has led to a population explosion in the last decade which has destroyed endemic vegetation and threatens critical breeding habitat of four endangered bird species (including the only Australian breeding habitat of the Wandering Albatross), as well as the broader World Heritage values of the island. A detailed eradication plan for both rabbits and rodents (the other remaining feral species on the island) has been prepared, based on successful experience on other subantarctic islands. 

Andrew Walker, Lawyers for Forests: Forestry and the RFA exemption.

Stream 3:  Protecting land and ocean-scapes: EPBC or other approaches?

Gary Meyers, Murdoch University: Indigenous rights and biodiversity protection.

James Watson, Wilderness Society National WildCountry Coordinator:  Challenges of landscape scale biodiversity conservation in Australia.

Carrie Deutsch, Victoria Naturally Project, Victorian National Parks Association: Modernising biodiversity institutions and policy in Victoria:  a white paper process.  Victoria’s biodiversity is in crisis. Victoria is the most cleared State in Australia, with 44% of our native plants and 30% of our native animals threatened or extinct. The Victorian government has just announced that it will undertake a White Paper on Land Health and Biodiversity. This workshop will tackle the key issues this process must address and potential solutions to ensure the long term resilience and health of Victoria’s biodiversity. The workshop will ask, what is the current role of national legislation as well as what role/s it should play?

Chris Smyth, Marine Campaign Coordinator, Australian Conservation Foundation: An Oceans Act and the EPBC Act:  complementary or mutually exclusive.  The Australian Oceans Act proposal made in the ACF and National Environmental Law Association’s paper Out of blue: an act for Australia’s oceans is briefly outlined.  The proposed act would provide legislative force to regional marine planning processes (including marine biodiversity protection in marine national parks) detailed in the provisions of the draft act.  The Out of the blue proposals for regional marine planning are compared with the provisions of the EPBC Act, especially section 176 of the EPBC Act ‘Bioregional Planning’, which is now being used by the Commonwealth government to implement its regional marine planning program.  Would the two acts be complementary or mutually exclusive? 

Stream 4:  Implementation of the Act

Dr Jackie Peel, Melbourne University:  Implementation of the Precautionary Principle under the EPBC Act.  The precautionary principle navigates the often treacherous waters that lie between the disciplines of law and science in the health and environemental field.  This workshop will give a brief overview of the precautionary principle, where it is to be found in the Act and the decisions in which it is to be applied.  It will look at the case law under the EPBC Act including the Booth case, the Whitsunday case and others.

Georgia Garrard, RMIT University:  Have we looked hard enough?  Incorporating species’ detectability and survey effort into sampling protocols.  Field surveys for rare and threatened plants are used widely in environmental impact assessment, EPBC Act activities and determinations and various other state and local government conservation activities.  The default assumption of many environmental impact assessments is that species that are present will be detected during surveys. A growing body of evidence, however, suggests that this is not always the case. Many species of plants and animals have detection probabilities of less than one and can remain undetected at a site when they are present. Failure of threatened species legislation to recognise this phenomenon could lead to poor management decisions and increased risk of extinction of rare and threatened species. Recent technical and theoretical developments in sampling theory have allowed users to determine the probability of detecting a present species in a single visit to the site. In this workshop, a method for determining the survey effort required to detect rare and threatened plant species will be presented.

Brendan Sydes, Principal Solicitor, Victorian EDO:  Referrals, FOI and the EPBC Act.  A critical look at opportunities for public participation in referrals under the EPBC Act - commenting on referrals, requesting reasons for decisions, getting access to documents under FOI and requesting reconsideration of decisions.