The NSW government has revealed its plan to fix the state's broken nature laws and curb runaway land clearing rates that have left the environment in crisis.
But it's stopped short of two key recommendations from a damning review that warned the state could lose half of its threatened species in 100 years without radical change.
Former federal treasury secretary Dr Ken Henry, who led the review, had called for no-go zones to protect high biodiversity areas from development.
He also wanted biodiversity laws to have legal supremacy over competing legislation, warning the crisis was so deep the government must act in ways it had not previously contemplated.
For now the government has chosen a different path and Dr Henry says that means progress is likely to take longer, with outcomes less certain.
But he's pleased the Minns Labor government has accepted the majority of his recommendations and his view that it has a genuine crisis and failing laws on its hands.
Environment Minister Penny Sharpe says the promised changes will be a meaningful start towards the lengthy task of environmental repair, and limiting future harms.
The Biodiversity Conservation Act, which Dr Henry found was not fit for purpose, will be rewritten to include a new NSW Nature Strategy.
The strategy will set targets for conservation and restoration, including how to address key threats to nature and how the state will contribute to Australia's environmental goals and commitments.
Areas of high biodiversity value will be carefully mapped to identify locations that should be shielded from negative impacts but the government insists they are not no-go zone maps, rather decision-making tools.
The much-maligned Biodiversity Offsets Scheme will be overhauled to address the raft of criticisms by the Henry review, including that it was compromised and lacked transparency.
Developers have also been put on notice that offsets - which allow damage from projects to be offset with preservation efforts other areas - will become an "option of last resort".
Instead the focus will be on minimising harms from the start, with a bias against projects that will cause serious and irreversible impacts.
And offsets that merely match what's been lost or damaged will go, with the whole scheme having to become nature positive over time.
There'll also be a new statutory standard requiring proponents to demonstrate how they have genuinely avoided and minimised impacts.
Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty has also promised a fresh review of the Local Land Services Act in order to rein in excess land clearing on private land.
It's set its sights on alarming levels of unallocated clearing, which conservation groups say is essentially invisible to government agencies.
Dr Henry questioned the government's decision to reject primacy for biodiversity laws over competing legislation.
He says the government instead plans to look at how other laws will affect the operation of the Biodiversity Conservation Act.
"It's obviously going to involve a hell of a lot more resources, it's obviously going to take a hell of a lot longer, and you can't be as confident (in the outcome). We'll see," he says.
Ms Sharpe says the suite of reforms are a start and the biggest she'll have to tackle as minister.
Asked why the government hadn't put biodiversity laws at the top of the legislative hierarchy, she said the government wasn't interested in "massive, sudden movements".
"It's a process approach (but) it's not my intention to change the outcome, which is that we've got to turn the biodiversity crisis around."
