Towering forests, wild rivers, vast oceans, and wildlife found nowhere else on Earth. Nature in Australia is as magnificent as it is unique, and deserves gold standard protection.

Add your name to the Wilderness Society’s submission calling on the Australian government to:

1. Put forests before profits. As the logging exemption is ending, what comes next must lift the bar on forest protection.

For decades, industrial native forest logging has operated under a special exemption from federal environment law that no other industry has. That exemption is finally ending in 2027, and we welcome it. But an exemption ending is only meaningful if what replaces it raises the bar for forests and bushlands and all the species that call them home.  

2. Ensure that corporations can’t pay to bulldoze a forest that can never come back.

Under the proposed rules, companies that destroy habitat can simply pay to "offset" the damage somewhere else. But some places—the Northern Jarrah Forest, critical and irreplaceable habitat for the forest red-tailed black cockatoo, or Tasmania's native eucalypt forests, the sole breeding habitat for the critically endangered swift parrot—can never be replaced. No amount of trees planted elsewhere brings them back. 

The new rules must draw a clear line around what must be protected. Without robust and enforceable boundaries, ‘offsetting’ could put any threatened ecosystem, forest or species on the chopping block. There should be no double-standards for vested interests.

3. Stop treating each development as if it exists in a vacuum; it doesn’t.

Australia's new national environment laws still assess each development in isolation. But nature doesn't work that way. A single mine, a single land clearing approval, a single infrastructure project might each look manageable on paper. However, it’s the accumulated impact of dozens of decisions over time—on the same species, in the same landscape—that pushes wildlife toward extinction. 

The new standards must fix this by requiring decision-makers to properly consider the combined, cumulative effect of multiple projects on threatened species and ecosystems. 

4. Close the loopholes: "Should" must become "Must".

Standards must be outcome-focused, measurable, and consistently applied. They must use clear, plain language that anyone can understand, not be riddled with discretionary language like “should”, “generally” or “where possible”. The current draft MNES and Offsets Standards are examples of where “should” must become “must”. The Samuel Review specifically called for this, so the government's failure to deliver it is a broken promise.