ALCA supports the development of practical guidance to improve environmental assessments and decision-making that affect the endangered grey snake, and outlines how it could be strengthened.
The Australian Land Conservation Alliance (ALCA) has provided feedback on the Australian Government’s draft information document for the grey snake.
This information document is a piece of government guidance that explains how proponents (eg, developers) should assess and manage impacts on a particular threatened species under the EPBC Act.
The quality of this guidance directly affects whether species like the endangered Grey Snake (Hemiaspis damelii) are protected, or continue to decline.
ALCA welcomes the development of the guidance, but it needs strengthening to better protect critical habitat, ensure offsets lead to genuine “net gain” for nature, and improve clarity and consistency in how impacts are assessed.
The grey snake is an endangered species that relies on specific habitats including wetlands, cracking clay soils, and vegetation communities such as brigalow and eucalypt woodlands. These areas support breeding, feeding, and movement, and cannot be separated or easily replaced.
Because the species is under-studied and difficult to detect, every known population plays an important role in maintaining genetic diversity and long-term survival.
Conservation outcomes must be real, measurable, and enforceable, not theoretical or assumed.
ALCA’s submission focuses on the need for the information to acknowledge that the destruction of critical habitat for an endangered species is an unacceptable impact, and that research that does not result in – or contribute to – a net gain cannot be considered an offset.
Image: shanewalsh via iNaturalist CC BY-NC 4.0
