Plibersek made a vow on environmental reforms. Albanese has put that at risk

The Maugean skate, a kite-shaped ray that lives on the murky floor of Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s wild west coast, appeared on Earth with the dinosaurs but was discovered in 1988. Just seven years later it was listed as endangered.

Since then its population has collapsed to about 1500, and scientists fear it will soon become extinct, partly because its home is being fouled by the salmon-farming industry.

If it does die out, it will be the first shark or ray species to be eradicated entirely by human action – and inaction. It will be, says James Trezise, director of the Biodiversity Council, another victim of successive Australian governments’ failure to reform the nation’s failing environment protection laws.

For its part, the salmon industry says it is already highly regulated and informed by the best science. In a submission to a recent federal government review, Salmon Tasmania said the industry’s presence in Macquarie Harbour was not a critical threat to the skate.

Last week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the shock announcement that he would abandon a deal made with the Greens over law reforms reportedly agreed to by his environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, and the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young, after extensive negotiations.

Albanese’s decision prompted analysis of the political realities that might have prompted it, and its implications. It was noted, for example, that Labor would need to win seats in Western Australia and Queensland, where mining companies fear reform, and in Tasmania, where the Maugean skate was battling for its life and where loggers value access to ancient forests.

The relationship between Albanese and Plibersek, who is seen as a potential future rival, was canvassed. It was suggested that as the election drew closer, Albanese did not want to be seen as too close to the Greens.

But there was less discussion of what the failure to pass significant reform meant for Australia’s biodiversity and ecosystems, and its efforts to address climate change, Trezise says. Delays to real reform, he fears, could be catastrophic.

There is little argument that the laws as they stand are failing. When an animal is listed as vulnerable or endangered in a nation such as the United States, says Trezise, environmental laws kick in, mandating recovery plans and protections. Populations then rebound. In Australia, the listing of an animal does little more than mark its continued decline.

The former Coalition government set the ball rolling for the current reform push, appointing Graeme Samuel to review the legislation. He recommended root-and-branch reform underpinned by a set of national standards and some form of environment protection agency (EPA) – in other words, a set of rules and an umpire to enforce them.

That body might also assess and approve developments with significant potential environmental impact, depoliticising a process in which huge pressures are placed on environment ministers by powerful interests.

When Labor won power, it vowed to introduce reforms. Plibersek promised that on her watch there would be no more extinctions, in a nation that has led the world in mammalian extinctions.

Later, she split the reform package into separate tranches, saying it would pass the laws package by package.

“Labor capitulated to the fossil-fuel lobby when they dumped the main recommendations from the Samuel Review to fix Australia’s broken environment laws, and now they’re rolling over again,” says Greens senator Hanson-Young.

With Albanese’s abandonment of the deal to install an EPA with teeth, and strong amendments blocked, Trezise believes Plibersek’s promise is now at risk. Which brings us back to the Maugean skate.

“If a federal set of standards was in place with an EPA, it could have intervened in the coming year to ensure that the skate was not sent extinct by the salmon farms. It could have instructed the industry how it needed to clean up its operations.”

Similarly, he says, WA stands to lose the Baudin’s black cockatoo, which has lost 90 per cent of its population over the past three generations due to development. Koalas in northern NSW and south-east Queensland are under threat due to development and logging. In Victoria, the grassland earless dragon, a tiny but fierce-looking lizard, was thought to have been lost until it was rediscovered last year around Bacchus Marsh in a path of suburban development.

Greater glider habitat on the east coast is still being bulldozed, as is swift parrot habitat in Tasmania.

But it is not just animals under threat.

Native forests are one of the best ways to store carbon: the mountain ash forests of Victoria’s central highlands store 1867 tonnes of carbon per hectare – more than the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

But few protections for our native carbon sinks are on offer: the Greens had been seeking an amendment for a process to phase out native forest logging.

Emeritus Professor Lesley Hughes says it is impossible to quantify how many tonnes of greenhouse emissions could result from the government refusing to include a “climate trigger” in the reforms, which would result in emissions being considered in the approvals process, because the number and nature of new coal and gas developments is unknown.

“Without a climate trigger, and with new projects still in the pipeline, Australia will continue to be a large contributor to the climate catastrophe,” she says. “Australia is a significant contributor to climate change. We’re relatively small domestically, but we ship about three times as much of our domestic emissions offshore to be used overseas. And while we continue to do that, we will continue to contribute to the climate crisis.”

Scientists led by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub maintain a grim list of the 47 Australian animals at the greatest risk of extinction.

It includes fish and frogs, mammals and birds. Some animals, like the Leadbeater’s possum, the Mountain-Pygmy possum and the swift parrot, are well known to many Australians. Others, like the Top End nabarlek, a shy little rock wallaby with a habit of darting about at night with its fluffy tail held aloft, might wink out of existence without most of us noticing its passing.

The list is longer than that of other countries because more Australian animals are under dire threat. In turn, this is in part because Australia, having evolved in isolation, simply has more unique flora and fauna than other parts of the world.

For the same reason, those species are particularly vulnerable to predation and dislocation by invaders, and from human development.

But it is also because our laws fail to protect them, says Trezise.

The choice to protect either an industry or an ecosystem has both practical and moral implications, he says.

Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter.