SIMON Corbell says laws providing greater consistency between the threatened species listings of the ACT and those of other jurisdictions including the Commonwealth have been passed in the Legislative Assembly.

“The new laws provided more clarity on the listing of threatened species, as Australian state and territory governments have previously used slightly different criteria and categories for assessing and listing species,” Simon said.

“The main amendment contained in the Nature Conservation Amendment Bill 2016 means the threatened species list will consist of two main parts – a national category and a regional category.

“National categories will include those species that are assessed as threatened on a national scale including in the ACT such as the Grassland Earless Dragon, the Striped Legless Lizard, and Pink-Tailed Worm-Lizard.

“Nationally threatened species will be listed as either extinct, extinct in the wild, critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable. These national categories of threat are used by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

“The regionally threatened category aims to list species that may not be threatened nationally but have undergone a significant decline within the ACT region. It is important to take action on regionally declining species before they become nationally threatened.

“These amendments also implement the Intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding on common assessment methods for the listing of threatened species that the ACT became a signatory to last year.

“The amendments passed today continue the ACT Government’s ongoing reform to harmonise and simplify environmental regulation while maintaining environmental protection.”

[Photo: “Bettongia gaimardi” by JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons].