INTRODUCTION

From the first days of settlement in Australia until the present time, there has been conflict between private landowners’ rights to develop and community interest in sustainable land management and functioning ecosystems. Biodiversity is impacted by a multitude of actions taken daily by individual land managers, industries, communities, and governments. The long-term and cumulative effects of these individual actions in terms of native species and natural systems is difficult to track and manage. Many species at risk do not live in the protected areas of New South Wales (NSW) but on private land, and there are often, and inevitably, conflicts about what should be the appropriate activities carried out on such lands and waters. Are legal mechanisms the best way to resolve this conflict?

NSW has recently introduced comprehensive reforms to try to deal with these conflicts. These reforms cover all aspects of threatened species, native vegetation, and biodiversity planning. This chapter concentrates on the protection and assessment of threatened species and the certification process, leaving out those matters concerning the listing process.

Section 2 describes the background to these issues covering the historical context, the current state of biodiversity in NSW and what has happened in NSW in the past ten years since the introduction of the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. Section 3 identifies the challenges that would need to be addressed by the reform process.