22 October 2025

The Hon Anthony Albanese MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

Sent via email

To the Prime Minister, Federal Environment Minister, and Members of the Albanese Government,

As researchers who study, document and work to recover Australia’s plants and animals, insects and ecosystems, we are keenly aware of the value of nature to Australians and the world.

Australia has one of the worst rates of deforestation globally. For every 100 hectares of native woodland cleared, about 2000 birds, 15,000 reptiles and 500 native mammals will die. As scientists and experts, we have sounded the alarm for more than 30 years that the large-scale destruction of native woodlands, forests, wetlands and grasslands was the single biggest threat to the nation’s biodiversity. That is still the case today, and it is driving an extinction crisis.

New figures show that Queensland continues to lead the nation in deforestation. The latest statewide landcover and trees study (SLATS) report shows that annually 44% of all deforestation in Queensland occurs in the Great Barrier Reef catchment areas, where over 140,000 hectares are bulldozed each year.

Deforestation in Great Barrier Reef catchments is devastating one of Australia’s most iconic natural wonders. When forests and bushland are bulldozed, erosion causes debris to wash into waterways, sending sediment, nutrients and pesticides into the Reef waters. This smothers coral, fuels crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, and reduces water quality. These impacts compound the damage caused by repeated mass bleaching events driven by climate change.

The Great Barrier Reef sustains precious marine life, supports local and global biodiversity, and underpins tourism economies and coastal communities that rely on its survival. Continued mass deforestation threatens these values and could jeopardise the Reef’s World Heritage status. In 2026 the World Heritage Committee will review Australia’s progress in protecting the Reef and may consider placing it on the World Heritage in Danger list, if key threats to the Reef, including deforestation, are not addressed.

This mass deforestation happens due to a loophole in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, our national nature law. Exemptions allow deforestation to continue largely unregulated by the EPBC Act through a grandfathering clause from 2000 known as “continuous use”. Without meaningful reform, deforestation will continue to drive massive biodiversity loss. This loophole must be closed as part of the proposed EPBC Act reforms. The law is meant to safeguard our wildlife and our most precious places like the Great Barrier Reef. Please support closing major deforestation loopholes in the EPBC Act as an urgent and priority issue for the Federal Government.

Sincerely,

Professor James Watson, University of Queensland

Dr. Michelle Ward

Mandy Cheung

Mr Lachlan Cross

Timothy Ravasi

Gillian Rowan

Dr Graham R. Fulton, The University of Queensland

Dr Alison Peel

Dr James Richardson University of Queensland

Luke Emerson, University of Newcastle

Dr Hilary Pearl

Dr Tina Parkhurst

Dr Kerry Bridle

Dr Tracy Schultz, Senior Research Fellow, University of Queensland

Dr. Zachary Amir

Prof David M Watson, Gulbali Institute, CSU

Naomi Ploos van Amstel, PhD candidate

David Schoeman

Associate Professor Simone Blomberg, University of Queensland

Professor Euan Ritchie, Deakin University

Dr Ian Baird, Conservation Biologist

Paul Elton (ANU)

Melissa Billington

Hayden de Villiers

Professor Brett Murphy, Charles Darwin University

Professor Sarah Bekessy

Professor Anthony J. Richardson (University of Queensland)

Prof. Winnifred Louis, University of Queensland

Dr Yung En Chee, The University of Melbourne

Dr Jed Calvert, postdoctoral research fellow in wetland ecology, University of Queensland

A/Prof Daniel C Dunn, Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland

Lincoln Kern, Ecologist

Professor Corey Bradshaw, Flinders University

Dr. Viviana Gonzalez, The University of Queensland

Prof. Helen Bostock

Dr Leslie Roberson

Bethany Kiss

Assoc. Prof Diana Fisher, UQ, and co-chair of the IUCN Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group

Dr Jacinta Humphrey, RMIT University

Professor Mathew Crowther

Christopher R. Dickman, Professor Emeritus, The University of Sydney

Fiona Hoegh-Guldberg, RMIT University

Dr Bertram Jenkins

Dr Daniela ParraFaundes

Dr Jessica Walsh

Dr. GABRIELLA scata – marine biologist, wildlife protector

Katherine Robertson

Professor Jane Williamson, Macquarie University

William F. Laurance, Distinguished Professor, James Cook University

A/Prof Deb Bower

Dr Leslie Roberson, University of Queensland

Ms Jasmine Hall, Senior Research Assistant in Coastal Wetland Biogeochemistry, Ecology and Management, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University

Dr Kita Ashman, Adjunct Research Associate, Charles Sturt University

Genevieve Newey

Matt Hayward

Jessie Moyses

Natalya Maitz, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Christina Ritchie

Liana van Woesik, PhD Student, University of Queensland

Benjamin Lucas, PhD Researcher

A/Prof. Carissa Klein, The University of Queensland

Conrad Pratt, PhD Student, University of Queensland

Dr Ascelin Gordon, RMIT University

Professor Nicole Graham, The University of Sydney

Professor Murray Lee, University of Sydney Law School

Dr Tracy Schultz, Snr Research Fellow, University of Queensland

Libby Newton (PhD candidate, Sydney Law School)

Hannah Thomas, University of Queensland

Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW Sydney

Dr Anna Hopkins

Lena van Swinderen, PhD candidate at the University of Queensland

Professor Jodie Rummer, James Cook University

Dr Nita Lauren, Lecturer, RMIT University

Dr Christina Zdenek

Madeline Davey

Dr Rachel Killean, Sydney Law School

Dr. Sofía López-Cubillos

Dr Claire Larroux

Dr Alice Twomey, The University of Queensland

Zoe Gralton

Dr Robyn Gulliver

Ryan Borrett, Murdoch University

Adjunct Prof. Paul Lawrence, Griffith University, Brisbane Qld

Professor Susan Park, University of Sydney

Dr Holly Kirk, Curtin University

Deakin Distinguished Professor Marcel Klaassen

Dr Megan Evans, UNSW Canberra

Dr Amanda Irwin, The University of Sydney

Dr Keith Cardwell

Professor Don Driscoll, Deakin University

Susan Bengtson Nash

Distinguished Professor David Lindenmayer

Dr Madelyn Mangan, University of Queensland

Dr Isabella Smith

Geoff Lockwood

Dr Paula Peeters, Paperbark Writer

Prof Cynthia Riginos, University of Queensland

Dr. Sankar Subramanian

Associate Professor Zoe Richards

Dr Jessie Wells, The University of Melbourne

Professor Gretta Pecl AM, University of Tasmania

Dr April Reside, The University of Queensland

Oriana Licul-Milevoj (Ecologist)

Dr Yves-Marie Bozec, University of Queensland

Dr Julia Hazel

Dr Judit K. Szabo

Ana Ulloa

Dr Andreas Dietzel

Philip Spark – North West Ecological Services

Jonathan Freeman

Dr/ Mohamed Mohamed Rashad

Close Major Deforestation Loopholes in the EPBC Act

The recent discovery of Grimpoteuthis feitiana, a new species of Dumbo octopus found deep in the Pacific, is a reminder of something both humbling and urgent: we still know so little about the ocean that shapes our lives. This fragile, finned creature, gliding silently more than a kilometer beneath the waves, has lived in these waters long before we mapped them, and its story is only now coming to light.

What moves me most about this discovery is not just the Dumbo octopus itself, but how it bridges science and culture. Its name draws inspiration from the flying apsaras of China’s Dunhuang murals, those graceful, winged figures that seem to dance through air and imagination. It reminds me that the deep sea has always held a place in our collective human story, — not only in myths and art, but in the ways we relate to nature, learn from it, and find meaning within it.

Pasifika connection to the ocean

For us in the Pacific, the ocean is more than a body of water. It is our identity, our culture, our history. Our ancestors read the seas to navigate, to survive, to connect communities scattered across islands. Discoveries like this Dumbo octopus awaken something deeper in me, — a sense that the ocean is alive with stories and wisdom we are only beginning to rediscover. And with that understanding comes a responsibility to protect it.

Each new species like the Dumbo octopus, each glimpse into the deep, is a warning as much as it is a wonder. The creatures of the abyss live slow, deliberate lives in fragile ecosystems, shaped by balance and patience. Deep-sea mining, pollution, and climate change threaten to erase them before we even learn their names. Protecting the Pacific’s oceans is not an abstract act of conservation; it is an act of cultural preservation, of love for our home, and for the unseen life that sustains us all.

Grimpoteuthis feitiana is more than a scientific discovery. It is a reminder that the ocean is still full of life, mystery, and wisdom — and that we have a duty to ensure these depths remain wild, healthy, and alive, for us and for the generations yet to come.

Reflection by Raeed Ali
Pacific Community Mobiliser

The Ocean We’re Still Discovering

Nature is not only mother to us all, but our shared witness. Because truly, we are never alone when in the hallowed company of the elements, and life of the earth.

Sometimes, it is the immensity of things which reaches inside you—oceans, sky and sun, or the curve of the terrestrial distance—while at other moments it is the intensity of intimate association at a smaller scale, like a single tree you know as a friend, or a specific combination of scent, stone, water and light, felt uniquely in situ.

In both great and small manifestations, the natural world solemnly and playfully attends our lives as we go about our business on this, our singular living planet.

I felt this sense of nature incarnated as an attentive companion acutely this week, when walking between meetings along the Swan River.

If you grow up in Perth, even in one of the outer suburbs as I did, the Swan River, or Derbal Yerrigan in the language of the Whadjuk Noongar People, is always there as a presence.

The bits I know best feel like a kind of emotional map of the journey through the years, as evocative as any diary. This patch, where I threw a cricket ball around with my best mate in the early evening, laughing at the joy of being alive as the spinning pill arced against the twilight; that slight bend in the path, imprinted with the ambivalent tension of being about to sit university exams; there, the site years ago, of running around at the feet of my Dad, as young as I can remember him; here, a spot that summons the sense of exhausting exhilaration when fecklessly going for a run in the mid-day western heat; and above all that cherished place, I will always associate with love, newly declared and found to be returned.

And other things too, inchoate layers of pleating fragments; thoughts and feelings without number, that will always be evoked in my mind by the sweep of the Swan

What is most evocative or sacred to us is always bound to feeling, rather than the product of any rational calculus. It is also true, though, that geography as memory is complicated by change—something that is a constant in nature; wildly accelerated by human intervention; and now spiralling into the violently unpredictable, because of global heating.

Derbal Yerrigan has no doubt always been changing, in the countless days that the river has flowed since time immemorial; but never altered or transformed in the way has occured since colonisation and industrialisation; nor in the way that is happening now.

I troubled about this while making my way along the Swan this week, and watched as an Australasian darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae) perched on the river wall and spread its wings interstitially, as if gesturing to signify the bonds between the land, water and sky. At that moment, I abruptly remembered that my gaze was not solitary, because far and high in the air behind me were the lidless eyes of the city skyscrapers, including the dark towers of the fossil fuel giants, Woodside and Chevron, staring down with abject contempt for the future.

I suspect like many of us, I feel a perpetual mental struggle between the dissonance of the everyday, which, even despite spring temperatures soaring 15 degrees Celsius above average, still has a normalcy to it that is discordant with what we know about the realities of global warming, and the forecasts of what is to come. The Swan, like all rivers, now faces its most violent test yet of rising temperatures and extreme unnatural events.

The attendance of nature to our lives is not passive. If we think only of ‘the environment’ just as subject, we miss the point of both our own embeddedness in this world, and of the agency of life itself. Every species on earth has an innate energy to flourish and reproduce. The Swan River will keep on rolling, with all of the intense hydrological power at its command. Given half a chance nature will resurge and rebound in wood and feather, tooth and maw.

Our conscious task, I think to myself, but mentally addressing both the bird and the river, is to purposefully draw on the power of this meaning; an internal strength derived from the preciousness of our memories imbricated in place. 

I pause and offer a silent pledge to the River: you’ve always been there for us. And in the activism, ingenuity, campaigning and commitment of millions of determined people across Australia and the world, all of whom are dedicated to stopping the destruction of nature and the climate and of securing a return to flourishing, so we will be there for you.

Q & A

Greenpeace campaigns are always solution-led, and one of the questions I have been asked a lot over the years is about our systemic solution for Western Australia to reduce emissions at an emergency speed and scale, and get off gas.

This week, it was terrific to be in Perth, joining colleagues to help launch a comprehensive decarbonisation plan for the state, Power Shift: WA’s Electrified Future written in collaboration with Springmount Advisory.

This report comprehensively shows how WA’s economy can be aligned with the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, and breaks down the transition pathway WA can take across energy, industry, transport and agriculture to achieve this. It highlights the challenges and opportunities across each sector, and provides policy level solutions to achieve these ambitions using only already-existing technologies. You can check out the report here.

River of Life