Who could have imagined the health impacts, let alone the economic ones, of a virtual lock down of modern day society? As if the catastrophe of the 2019/2020 bushfires were not hard enough for parts of Australia to deal with, now we are dealing with the aftermath of 74 deaths (current as of 22/4/20) and a hit to the economic foundations of this country not equalled for generations.

As Queen Elizabeth II described, we are ‘resilient’ people, and I am sure we will bounce back from this, but how long will it take? For us, who were (touch wood) affected a lot less than the rest of the world, it may not be such a long upward climb, but how resilient is America, or Italy? It surely will take some time to get back to what all of our normal looks like.

So what have been the positives that have come out of the Corona crisis? Dolphins swimming up canals in Venice, nope that proved to be a fake, but what an idea! Some of the real benefits that have come out of the Pandemic, howeverdo include improvements in air quality.

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Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act)

SUBMISSIONS DUE BY 17^TH APRIL, 2020

The Environment and Protection Biodviersity Conservation (EPBC) Act is Australia’s national environment law. The EPBC Act is meant to be stopping iconic threatened species like the Koala from going extinct. According to the Wilderness Society, however, our current protections and laws leave many of Australia’s animals facing extinction. Shockingly almost 99.7% of all developments are approved except for 2% that get knocked back in court (https://www.wilderness.org.au/work/nature-laws-that-work)…

A review of the EPBC Act every 10 years, which is coming up this year, can evidently be a vital chance for us to opt in to a discussion about Australia’s extinction and deforestation crisis.

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