The Federal Government says it wants to prevent any new extinctions of plants and animals. 

The Federal Government has committed to a new Threatened Species Action Plan, which sets out a pathway for threatened species conservation and recovery over the next 10 years.

It includes the aim of preventing any new extinctions of plants and animals, and protecting and conserving at least 30 per cent of Australia’s land mass.

Fifteen new animal and plant species have been added to the endangered list, primarily due to human activity.

Ms Plibersek says Australia is “the mammal-extinction capital of the world” and that previous strategies to save local species must be reconsidered.

“It is a very ambitious thing to have a goal of zero extinctions when we have had catastrophic natural events like the Black Summer bushfires, proceeded by drought and followed by flood,” Ms Plibersek said. 

“It is important to set this goal because it means we focus our efforts in protecting the animals, plants and landscapes that are particularly vulnerable.”

However, Professor Euan Ritchie - Director of the Media Working Group at the Ecological Society of Australia and a Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at Deakin University - says the plan “falls well short of what’s needed to arrest and turn around Australia’s devastating and shameful conservation record and biodiversity decline and extinction crisis”.

He and other scientists are frustrated that, given Australia’s dependence on on the environment, “substantial changes from governments, state, territory and federal, simply aren’t being acted upon”. 

He says that the 110 species and 20 places named as priorities, and roughly $225 million committed to their care as part of the plan, “is just a tiny fraction of what’s required to see widespread, substantial conservation improvement”.

Scientists say that securing 30 per cent of land and sea will not secure species unless there is far greater investment in the actual management of these places, and will not achieve much at all if land clearing, logging and inappropriate fishing continue unabated.