We fought government inaction with legal action—and won.

• For the first time, greater gliders, ghost bats, sandhill dunnarts and Australian lungfish will each have recovery plans—legally binding roadmaps to help them survive and recover—by July 2026.
• Recovery plans for seven other species—including the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, red goshawk, Carnaby’s black cockatoo and long-footed potoroo—are confirmed to remain in force and must continue to be implemented.
• The government has now confirmed that recovery plans do not expire. They remain in force until the species is no longer listed as threatened, providing certainty for hundreds of Australia’s iconic plants and animals.

While governments are giving corporations the green light to destroy life-giving forests or build new, climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects, more and more unique animals and plants are quietly being added to Australia’s threatened species list—often because their habitat is still being destroyed.

Animals like Australian lungfish, greater gliders and red goshawks don’t have time to wait for politicians to prioritise developing and implementing the recovery plans needed to save them.

It’s time for the federal government to do its job and take decisive action for the future of our precious, globally renowned animals and plants.

The cost of inaction is a future of extinctions.

We believe the Federal Environment Minister has legal responsibilities to have current recovery plans in place for hundreds of threatened species—and has failed to do this.

Represented by lawyers from Environmental Justice Australia, we went to court to argue that Environment Ministers must do their job of bringing Australia’s unique plants and animals back from the brink of extinction. Doing their job doesn’t seem like a big ask.

We argued that Environment Ministers, past and present, have consistently failed to make recovery plans—and this failure is unlawful.

This case sets a precedent that confirms that recovery plans are not optional, and are a binding duty under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) and governments must deliver them.

A recovery plan is a detailed roadmap designed to help a species avoid extinction.

It lays out the specific steps needed to stop a species’ decline, and help it thrive in the wild again. It should identify critical habitat, outline key threats, and guide government decisions—including project approvals.

The goal is to stop further decline and, ideally, take that species off the threatened list altogether.

It’s a bit like a doctor’s treatment plan for a patient—only in this case, the ‘patient’ is an entire species that needs urgent care to survive.

Many threatened species are currently missing a recovery plan—despite an Environment Minister having decided that a plan is needed. Right now, there are hundreds of animal and plant species that don’t have the recovery plans they need.

Some of the species identified in the case, like the Australian lungfish, ghost bat and greater glider, have been awaiting recovery plans for years. For others, the plans have been left to expire.

Scroll down to meet some of the species that form the basis of our case, on behalf of all of Australia’s threatened species.

Meet the neglected feathered, furred and finned faces of our case!

Status: Endangered

Recovery plan: Still no recovery plan

• Greater gliders are Australia's largest gliding mammal. Their First Nations names include Poong-goong, Warnda or pan’ka, bank'kii or mulyrir.

• They need hollow-bearing eucalyptus trees for food and shelter. Conservation of tall forests in Victoria, NSW and QLD is vital for their survival.

• The species underwent a severe reduction in numbers of at least 50% between 2000 and 2022 (Conservation advice, 2022, page 46).

• Their thick, dense fur ranges in colour from white to brown to black. They can glide up to 100 metres using their furry gliding membranes and tails to steer.

• Some gliders have several tree hollow nests—even up to 20 nests!

Status: Vulnerable

Recovery plan: Still no recovery plan

• Ghost bats are Australia’s largest microbat—and only carnivorous bat. They use their large eyes and echolocation to capture birds, lizards and small mammals, which they bring back to their roosts and eat whole: feathers, bones and teeth!

• Ghost bats used to live in permanent maternal roosts in deep natural caves and old mines across Australia, but habitat destruction means the only survivors live in scattered populations—mainly in the Top End.

• Helping ghost bats means protecting precious bushland and savanna threatened by deforestation in Northern Australia.

• Ghost bats suffered a population decline of more than 30% (up to 60-90% in some regions) between 1992-2016 (Conservation advice, 2015, page 9).

Status: Endangered (Baudin’s black cockatoo; Carnaby’s black cockatoo); Vulnerable (Forest red-tailed black cockatoo)

Recovery plan: No current recovery plan

Forest red-tailed, Baudin’s and Carnaby’s black cockatoos need big, old trees for nesting. Their survival is closely tied to the protection of WA’s jarrah forests from mining, and banksias—their food trees—from being destroyed by development.

Forest red-tailed black cockatoo / Karak (Noongar name)

• Endemic to forests in the South West from Albany to Perth, these cockatoos eat nectar, flowers and nuts from marri and jarrah trees, and sometimes insects.

• They make a short call that sounds like their Noongar name ‘karak’.

• They’re monogamous and live in small family groupings. Females only have one chick at a time—sometimes breeding only once every 2-3 years.

Carnaby’s black cockatoo:

• These WA natives migrate back and forth from the Swan Coastal Plain where they feed in summer, to the Wheatbelt where they breed in tree hollows in winter.

• They used to live in flocks of thousands but now there are so few, they’re listed as endangered.

• They breed in monogamous pairs, returning to the same tree hollow each year to breed.

Baudin’s black cockatoo:

• The rate of decline for this species is more than 50 percent over three generations since the 1960s (Conservation advice, 2018, page 6). This is the most endangered black cockatoo on mainland Australia.

Status: Endangered

Recovery plan: Still no recovery plan

• Sandhill dunnarts are elusive, carnivorous marsupials found in intact spinifex habitat in arid sand dunes of South Australia and Western Australia.

• Protecting remnant sandplain ecosystems from land clearing—including north of the Nullarbor Plain—is crucial for their survival.

• They sleep by day in sandy burrows, then forage almost all night long for insects and reptiles!

• They’re often called “marsupial mice”. In fact, they’re so similar to mice that in cold weather, they have been recorded sharing their nests with house mice to keep warm.

• Sandhill dunnarts are now located in three widely separated areas. Because their range has declined, it’s assumed that the extent and quality of their habitat, and the number of mature individuals, is also in decline (Conservation advice, 2015, page 1).

Status: Endangered

Recovery plan: No current recovery plan

• Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles (a subspecies of the more common mainland wedge-tail eagle) are Australia’s largest bird of prey, with wing spans up to 2.3 metres!

• These top-order predators hunt over a wide range, and can carry up to half their body weight during flight.

• They rely on old growth forests for nesting and hunting, and help maintain the ecological integrity of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

• Logging of Lutruwita / Tasmania’s spectacular forests and attempts to establish tourism operations within the World Heritage Area pose a significant risk to these severely endangered birds. They desert their nest (often for years) if disturbed.

• There are estimated at less than 1,000 Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles remaining in the wild (SPRAT Species profile).

Status: Endangered

Recovery plan: No current recovery plan

• Red goshawks, affectionately called The Red, are almighty raptors with huge yellow feet and powerful talons. They are believed to be Australia’s rarest bird of prey (Conversation article on University of Qld research). They are evolutionary oddities, with no near relatives in Australia.

• Once widespread across northern Australia, and often found close to watercourses, this powerful raptor now relies on intact woodlands and riparian forests.

• Preventing deforestation, much of which is driven by agriculture, and safeguarding breeding sites are key to their recovery.

• There are currently estimated to be under 1,400 mature red goshawks in the wild, and declining. The red goshawk has been listed as Endangered because all of these mature individuals are all found within the single remaining population, which faces ongoing threats (Conservation advice, 2023, page 23).

Status: Endangered

Recovery plan: No current recovery plan

• Long-footed potoroos are endemic to the dense forests of Victoria and New South Wales—in fact, they’re only found in three places in the world.

• These shy, truffle-eating marsupials depend on undisturbed undergrowth. Stopping logging is essential to their survival.

• The population of long-footed potoroos declined at least 50% over the 21 years up to 2021 (Conservation advice, 2022, page 36).

• It’s estimated long-footed potoroos lost 80% of their known habitat in the Black Summer bushfires.

Status: Vulnerable

Recovery plan: No current recovery plan

• The Australian grayling is also known as the cucumber mullet, due to the cucumber smell given off by freshly caught fish!

• This freshwater fish, found in coastal rivers from NSW, SA and Victoria to Tasmania, needs free-flowing streams for migration and spawning. Adults spawn in lower freshwater reaches of water systems, their larvae then drift downstream to the sea, and juveniles migrate back upstream into freshwater.

• Restoring river connectivity and maintaining water quality are vital for their future.

• The grayling has been estimated to have an ‘area of occupancy’ of less than 2,000m2, as much of its usual distribution in NSW and Victoria has been impacted by threats including bushfire and sediment (Conservation advice, 2020, pages 15-16).

Status: Vulnerable

Recovery plan: Still no recovery plan

• Australian lungfish are living fossils of immense scientific importance, found in Queensland’s Mary and Burnett Rivers. The Australian lungfish is the closest living relative to land-dwelling tetrapods—the ancient relative of frogs, whales, dinosaurs and humans.

• Australian lungfish have a single lung and the unique ability to breathe air when there’s no water, or through their five pairs of gills.

• This ancient species relies on slow-moving waters with abundant aquatic plants. Protecting river flows and preventing habitat destruction are critical for their survival.

• They have poor eyesight and can use electroreception (ability to sense electric fields) to locate hidden prey like frogs, earthworms, small fish, shrimp and snails.

• They grow very slowly and live for decades—with one estimated to have lived to the age of 109! An Australian lungfish named Methuselah, living in the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium, has been there since the 1930s.

• There has been a 26% reduction in the quality of their breeding and nursery habitat in the main channels of the Burnett and Mary Rivers. As a result of this, it’s predicted the adult breeding population will undergo a substantial decline over the next three generations (Listing advice, 2003).

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) is Australia’s federal nature law.

It provides a framework for the protection of Australia’s biodiversity and special natural places.

This Act sets out the process that must be followed in order to list species of plants and animals as threatened (vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered), as well as when and how recovery plans should be made.

The EPBC Act says that it is the responsibility of the Environment Minister to determine whether a threatened species needs a recovery plan.

If the minister decides a species requires a recovery plan, the Act states that a recovery plan for the species must be enacted within three years of the day the Environment Minister decides one is needed (see section 273(1) of the Act).

An Auditor General report in 2022 found that since 2013, only 2% of recovery plans were completed within the statutory timeframe.

The Wilderness Society says Environment Ministers, past and present, have consistently failed to make recovery plans—and this failure is unlawful. Represented by lawyers from Environmental Justice Australia, we went to court to argue that Environment Ministers must do their job: bring Australia’s unique plants and animals back from the brink of extinction.

*Photographer credits [map]: 1. Robert Dani, 2. John Harrison, 3. Ken Griffiths, 4. Justin Cally, 5. Bruce Thomson, 6. Wirestock / Getty images, 7. surapong, 8. Kristian Bell, 9. Imogen Warren, 10. Jane Hammond, 11. Jane Hammond.