Western Australia’s revised catch-and-kill orders for sharks declared a “serious threat” could kill more great white sharks than the defunct drumlines policy, the WA Greens say.



Greens MP Lynn MacLaren has accused the Barnett government of “trying to cull sharks by stealth” by failing to refer the revised policy, which replaces the “imminent threat” policy of 2012, to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) for assessment.

The revised policy was introduced late last year but the changes were never formally announced. It became public knowledge after the Department of Fisheries used it to justify the deployment of capture gear to cull a tagged great white shark that repeatedly pinged an acoustic receiver at Warnbro Sound, south of Perth, on 19 December.

Despite the EPA’s scathing assessment of the state’s shark hazard mitigation strategies and rejection of the continued use of drumlines last year, the government did not refer the modified policy to the authority for assessment.

Instead it was referred by MacLaren on 9 January.

The EPA must decide in 28 days whether it intends to review the policy, allowing for a seven-day public consultation period,.

But MacLaren’s office was told last week that the clock had stopped on that timetable while the EPA waited for further information from the proponent, understood to be the Department of Fisheries.

MacLaren told Guardian Australia the revised “serious threat” policy was “likely to cause more protected white sharks to be killed than last year’s drumline strategy.”

And she said the government introduced the policy “by stealth in order to sidestep environmental assessment”.

MacLaren said the only “logical” response to the referral would be for the EPA to reject the policy without assessment, based on the findings of the Public Environmental Review of the drumlines program, or require it to go through the same rigorous assessment process that eventually rejected the shark cull.

A government spokesman told Guardian Australia the “serious threat” policy was not referred to the EPA because it was considered to be a “revision” of the previous policy.

“It was not considered this would have a significant impact on the shark population,” the spokesman said.

EPA chairman Paul Vogel said he was considering a referral of the serious threat guidelines. He would not confirm the process had been delayed while waiting for further information, and could not say when the referral would be open for public comment.

Under the Environmental Protection Act, a “revised policy” may be reviewed if there is “significant new or additional information that justified the reassessment”.

Alexia Wellbelove, a senior project manager with Human Society International, said the use of scientific tagging data to identify a shark as a “serious threat”, coupled with the broad scope of the “serious threat” criteria, meant the government could effectively target certain sharks to be killed under the revised policy.

“The WA government could this afternoon put some drumlines in the water because it says there’s an apparent serious threat level, and a very low hurdle to assess that, and not very transparent reasoning,” she said.

“We don’t consider that the culling has ended at all when there’s still a serious threat policy in place.”

Wellbelove said the repeated claim by the premier, Colin Barnett, that there were significantly more great white sharks in waters off Western Australia now than when the species was protected in 1999 was “biologically impossible”.

This week Guardian Australia published a suggestion by the Margaret River Boardriders Club, made in private government consultation in December 2013, that great white shark numbers had increased tenfold from 10,000 to 100,000 in a decade.

Great white sharks reach sexual maturity at the age of 15.

“It’s not biologically possible for there to have been an explosion of numbers. Sharks born in 1999 can’t even mate yet,” Wellbelove said.

Wellbelove said WA’s shark hazard mitigation strategy should be based on science, as well as the need to protect public safety.

There have been 14 fatal shark attacks in WA since 2000, the most recent of which resulted in the death of 17-year-old Jay Muscat near Albany in December.