About 365 of the projects examined were deemed “not significant” by the serving minister under the law, and 152 were judged to be a “controlled action”.
Any project classified as “non-significant” should have resulted in less habitats cleared however the study revealed this wasn’t the case.
“This makes it very clear we’ve been failing to protect threatened species. We’ve been doing the opposite and losing habitat at a great rate. We find ourselves in a precarious situation especially with climate change now being the amplifier [to threats] that it is,” Brendan Sydes, national biodiversity policy adviser at the Australian Conservation Foundation told the Guardian.
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