The purpose of the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act is to “to conserve biodiversity at bioregional and State scales”. The NSW Government are undertaking a statutory review of the Act to determine whether the policy objectives of the Act remain valid and whether the terms remain appropriate for securing those objectives.

Unfortunately, we have found that the Act is not currently achieving its purpose as biodiversity in NSW continues to decline.

Biodiversity Councillors Professor David Keith, Professor Richard Kingsford, Oliver Costello, Dr Rachel Morgain and Professor Hugh Possingham and our project analyst Dr Emily Greg have reviewed the Act and prepared our submission which identifies 26 recommendations that could improve the operation and implementation of the Act.