The ACT Greens have condemned the federal government for pushing the critically endangered Canberra Grassland Earless Dragon towards extinction following its approval  of the Canberra Airport Northern Road development.

Deputy Greens Leader Jo Clay said that despite hundreds of people backing calls to save the critically endangered earless dragon, federal Labor had chosen the interests of business over people and planet.

“The approval of the Northern Road at Canberra Airport is a blow to the community and sends a message that our federal government does not care about nature,” said Clay.

“The offsets and conditions in this road development approval are an attempt to buy the goodwill of the community in exchange for habitat degradation, the annihilation of one of our local critters and potentially the uplisting of many other species who live in temperate grasslands.

“The reality is there are very few patches of this habitat in Australia. Let’s be clear, the impacts on the dragons and grassland habitat are entirely avoidable and not compensated for by the conditions attached to the development.

“We call on the ACT Labor government to use all compensation funding from the road development to protect remaining natural temperate grassland habitat, otherwise there will be nowhere left in the wild to reintroduce dragons from the breeding program.

“Our national environmental laws have been failing for years; Labor threw in the towel last term to reform our systems and genuinely put people and the planet ahead of vested interests.

“Now we’ve seen the Canberra Earless Dragon added to their failures of no new extinctions, right behind Tassie’s Maugean Skate casualty thanks to Labor backing the dirty salmon industry.”