Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016

The purpose of this Act is to maintain a healthy, productive and resilient environment for the greatest well-being of the community, now and into the future, consistent with the principles of ecologically sustainable development (described in section 6(2) of the Protection of the Environment Administration Act 1991), and in particular—

to conserve biodiversity at bioregional and State scales, and

to maintain the diversity and quality of ecosystems and enhance their capacity to adapt to change and provide for the needs of future generations, and

to improve, share and use knowledge, including local and traditional Aboriginal ecological knowledge, about biodiversity conservation, and

to support biodiversity conservation in the context of a changing climate, and

to support collating and sharing data, and monitoring and reporting on the status of biodiversity and the effectiveness of conservation actions, and

to assess the extinction risk of species and ecological communities, and identify key threatening processes, through an independent and rigorous scientific process, and

to regulate human interactions with wildlife by applying a risk-based approach, and

to support conservation and threat abatement action to slow the rate of biodiversity loss and conserve threatened species and ecological communities in nature, and

to support and guide prioritised and strategic investment in biodiversity conservation, and

to encourage and enable landholders to enter into voluntary agreements over land for the conservation of biodiversity, and

to establish a framework, reflecting the avoid, minimise and offset hierarchy, to avoid, minimise and offset the impacts of proposed development and land use change on biodiversity, and

to establish a scientific method for assessing the likely impacts on biodiversity values of proposed development and land use change, for calculating measures to offset those impacts and for assessing improvements in biodiversity values, and

to establish market-based conservation mechanisms through which the biodiversity impacts of development and land use change can be offset at landscape and site scales, and

to support public consultation and participation in biodiversity conservation and decision-making about biodiversity conservation, and

to make expert advice and knowledge available to assist the Minister in the administration of this Act.