Conservation documents for half of all critically endangered species don’t mention climate change
Conservation documents for more than half of Australia’s critically endangered species and habitats fail to mention climate change according to new analysis that argues there is a significant “climate gap” in the management of Australia’s threatened wildlife.
The report was commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and prepared by the Australian National University’s GreenLaw project, which is led by students in the ANU’s law faculty.
The analysis examined the extent to which conservation documents for Australia’s most imperilled wildlife discussed and addressed the threat of global heating.
It found that for 178 out of 334 critically endangered species and habitats the threat of climate change was not mentioned in the government’s conservation information at all.
When it was mentioned, the analysis found the information “tended to be brief and generalised” and the recommended actions to mitigate the threat were limited.
“Our results demonstrate there is a significant climate gap in the management of Australia’s threatened species,” said GreenLaw chief executive and lead researcher, Annika Reynolds.
The report argues that without such an analysis there was a risk that management of wildlife or decisions about developments affecting it would not factor in the impact of the climate crisis.
“It means that the recovery actions that are meant to be happening are not going to be informed by the latest and most up-to-date information about the threat of climate change to those critically endangered species and communities,” said Brendan Sydes, the ACF’s biodiversity policy adviser.
“Recovery plans are supposed to inform recovery efforts, so if they’re not actually capturing the threats and the actions that are required to address them, there is a risk those actions could be misdirected.”
When species and habitats are listed as threatened under Australia’s environmental laws, information is generally prepared that describes the level of decline, key threats and actions to help their recovery.
These conservation documents can take the form of either a recovery plan, which the environment minister is legally bound not to act inconsistently with; or, more commonly, a conservation advice – a similar document but which does not have the same legal force under national law.
GreenLaw examined these documents for all species and ecological communities listed as critically endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
The group found in addition to some documents not mentioning global heating at all, there were others where the threat was mentioned but no actions that could be taken to address it were discussed because this was “outside the scope of the plan”.
They found climate was omitted from some documents where there was scientific uncertainty about its likely impact for that particular plant, animal or habitat.
But Reynolds said the information gap was also evident for some species that “were known to suffer from extreme heat and drought”, such as the short-nosed sea snake and the leafscaled sea snake. Documents for those species do not discuss climate change directly despite listing coral bleaching as a major threat.
There were also other species that fell outside the scope of the analysis because they have a lower threat status but whose documentation excludes up-to-date information on the climate crisis.
The conservation advice for the spectacled flying fox lists climate change as a “potential” and “future” threat despite the animal being uplisted to endangered in 2019 after almost a third of its population was wiped out by a heatwave.
The report found that conservation documents that had been written or updated in the past three years were more likely to include a detailed analysis of the climate threat.
The ACF said the government needed to increase funding for threatened species recovery, including funds to update its scientific information about the impacts of the climate crisis on individual plants, animals and habitats.
“There’s just a political commitment that’s lacking at the moment,” Sydes said.
Recovery planning for species has come under the spotlight in recent years.
Guardian Australia has previously reported that fewer than 40% of listed threatened species have a recovery plan. A further 10% of all those listed have been identified as requiring a recovery plan but those plans haven’t been developed or are unfinished. Even more plans are out of date.
In September, the government announced it would scrap recovery plans – in favour of a conservation advice – for almost 200 endangered species and habitats including the Tasmanian devil, the whale shark and the critically endangered Cumberland plain woodland.
A spokesperson for the environment minister, Sussan Ley, said the minister had reviewed and made several new recovery plans and conservation advices that included new research, bushfire impacts and other factors.
“A number of plans are currently with states and territories, and are in the process of being updated to include multiple factors including climate,” they said.
“Where relevant, information on climate change informs the development of conservation advice at the time a species is listed and in the development of any recovery plan.”
The spokesperson added that the government’s $200m for bushfire recovery had contributed to significant scientific research on species affected by extreme weather.
The new threatened species strategy for 2021 to 2026 had eight action areas, including one focused on climate change adaptation and resilience to “reduce the impact of established pressures on threatened species and assist them to adapt to a changing climate”.