The Morrison government has breached its own environmental laws by failing to produce a long-awaited recovery plan that could have assisted one of Australia’s most threatened animals in the wake of the bushfires.

Four years after the greater glider was federally listed as a vulnerable species, the survival of the marsupial has become all the more uncertain after much of its habitat was ravaged by fire.

The greater glider is a protected species now under further threat. Credit:Josh Bowell

As the wildlife death toll continues to rise, The SundayAge can reveal the government has failed to meet its own statutory deadline to release a recovery plan aimed at tackling the greater glider’s long-term decline.

Lawyers say the delay is unlawful because it contravenes the Commonwealth’s own Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which required the Environment Minister to release the strategy by May 2019.