Finding out about legal requirements

Property managers are subject to a large number of policies, regulations and legislation across all of their business operations. These include reporting and management requirements for financial reporting, occupational health and safety, disease in livestock, and noxious weed management. State, Territory and the Commonwealth Governments have also introduced a range of legislation, regulations and policies to help maintain and enhance native vegetation and biodiversity. Being aware of and following these requirements is a key component of property management.

In 2002, key pieces of biodiversity legislation at the State and Territory level numbered six for the Northern Territory; four for Tasmania; eight for Queensland; seven for Victoria; nine for NSW; five for South Australia and ten in Western Australia. This and other material on legal and other requirements is provided in the Introduction to Environmental Management Systems in Agriculture 59. This resource tries to clarify the different policies, strategies and agreements for landholders by examining what it means for them. Covering the National, State and Territory level, a significant section focuses on key biodiversity legislation. This is also relevant to native vegetation management. Readers are directed to principal technical resources for Environmental Law as well as websites at which they can access electronic copies of the Principal Acts and Statutory Rules in operation at a given point in time. Specific websites are given, where available. Codes of practice and best management practice guidelines are provided. Readers are also referred to a network of independent community environmental law centres. Brief summaries of native vegetation legislation around Australia are provided in proceedings of a 2002 conference, I Can See Clearly Now: Land clearing and law reform 60

Legislation for Commonwealth and non self-governing Territories (e.g. Christmas Island) is available online 61. Commonwealth and State Acts can be accessed via the Australasian Legal Information Institute website  62. Table 2 lists websites for the principal native vegetation and biodiversity legislation at the State and Territory level where information about legislation and statutory instruments can be sourced. Note that these are links to the Acts and Regulations themselves, not to summaries or guides.

Table 2: Websites for key native vegetation and biodiversity legislation in each State and Territory

The Australian Government mechanism for national environment protection and biodiversity conservation is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). Landholders can access information in The EPBC Act: Opportunities and implications for rural landholders 63 fact sheet.

	Action: 1.3
	Read descriptions or summaries of the legislation relevant to the native vegetation that you are managing. How do the regulations differ from current or intended management? Explore the information relating to these differences in the guide.
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The fact sheet covers the following topics:

• What are the key effects of the EPBC Act on property owners?
• When must property owners obtain Commonwealth environmental impact approval for their activities?
• When can farmers enter into conservation agreements with the Commonwealth, and what are the benefits?
• Plans made under the EPBC Act;
• What opportunities for assistance are there for farmers under the EPBC Act?
• Where to find further information.

Information and relevant links for farmers about the EPBC Act (1999) can also be found on a website 64. The Environmental Defenders Office has also produced a plain English guide to using the EPBC Act 65.

Legislation on native vegetation in NSW (2003)  66 and Queensland (2004)  67 requires landholders to produce property vegetation plans before clearing vegetation. In NSW, a development application will also suffice, but preparing a vegetation plan is likely to have other benefits. The legislation aims to give farmers more flexibility, as well as reward good management. The potential synergies between these new requirements and whole property planning are explored in Question 3.

In 2003, Victoria’s Native Vegetation Management 68 was incorporated into planning schemes. This requires that a planning permit be obtained for proposed removal, destruction or lopping of native vegetation.

Requirements for managing threatened species and communities

The management of threatened plant and animal species, as well as threatened communities, is a focus of many government policies and regulations. For example, the Commonwealth EPBC Act (1999) provides for:

• identification and listing of Threatened Species and Threatened Ecological Communities;
• development of Recovery Plans for listed species and ecological communities;
• recognition of Key Threatening Processes; and where appropriate
• reducing these processes through Threat Abatement Plans.  69

A summary of key legislation relevant to native vegetation and associated key threatening processes (if identified) are given in Table 3. In some cases, the legislation provides reasons for declaring these threats as key threatening processes and extensive reference lists for further information are provided. For more detail, people are referred to online threatened species information and resources at a Department of the Environment and Heritage website that also includes events, posters, fact sheets, plans and reports 70.

An Australian Network for Plant Conservation 71 website is useful for finding out about threatened plant species. It provides National, State and Territory links for listings of threatened plants under the different legislation. The Threatened Species and Threatened Ecological Communities 72 website  directs users to information about species covered by Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act Recovery Plans, key threatening processes, ecological communities and action plans. Users can also find out about
the status of species by referring to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act lists, and can link to a network’s threatened species website to learn more about improving the prospects of their States threatened species. From the website, a link is provided to the Species Profile and Threats Database (SPRAT) 73 database which provides information on threatened species and ecological communities listed under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. This covers species descriptions and distributions, populations, habitat, threats, movement, reproduction and taxonomy. References to several resources on the management of threatened plant species are provided in Question 2.

	Action: 1.4
	Decide if the threatening processes listed in the legislation apply to your native vegetation and what management practices will minimise the threats.
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Australian Government  74^,   75,  ACT  76,  NSW  77^,  78^,   79^,  80,  NT  81, 
Qld  82^,  83^,  84, SA  85, Tas  86, Vic  87,  WA  88,  89

Exploring impacts of regulations on landholders and local communities

Landholders and their representative organisations have raised questions for many years about the impacts of native vegetation and biodiversity regulations on their businesses. These issues were recently investigated in Impacts of Native Vegetation and Biodiversity Regulations 90, which set out to do two things. Firstly, the aim was to document and assess impacts of existing native vegetation and biodiversity regulatory regimes on landholders and local communities, and the effectiveness of the regimes in reducing the costs of resource degradation. Secondly, it sought to explore whether there are more efficient and effective ways of achieving desired environmental objectives.

The Commission concluded that the current heavy reliance on regulating the clearance of native vegetation on private rural land, typically without compensation, has imposed substantial costs on many landholders who have retained native vegetation on their properties. Nor does regulation appear to have been particularly effective in achieving environmental goals – in some situations it seems to have been counter-productive. It stated that greater exposure of the costs and benefits of conservation effort, clarification of environmental objectives, and a process for determining agreed landholder and community responsibilities for achieving those objectives, will be critical to achieving more efficient, and equitable, solutions. How many of the recommendations of the inquiry are adopted will be up to the agencies and organisations with responsibility for developing and implementing the regulations.