The Hunter River estuary's habitat and the region's remaining woodlands have hit the point of no return and must be protected from further development.
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This assertion comes amid increasing national and global concern about human destruction of the planet's natural systems, upon which life depends.
Hunter Bird Observers Club conservation officer Mick Roderick said the Hunter estuary and temperate woodlands were the "two most important biodiversity areas that intersect with people and development" in the region.
"The woodlands have many threatened species. They're remnants," Mr Roderick said.
He said concerns about the Hunter River estuary refer to loss of saltmarsh habitat and shorebird-roosting areas over time in areas that include Hexham Swamp, Tomago, Ash and Kooragang islands and near Stockton Bridge.
"We've reached a situation where we need to start completely avoiding development in those places," he said.
In Australia, the Senate is holding an inquiry into Australia's "fauna extinction crisis".
Hunter Bird Observers Club said surveys of migratory shorebirds in the Hunter estuary had shown a "disturbing trend".
Many of these species had been classified as in decline. Some are on the brink of extinction.
Birds like the eastern curlew and curlew sandpiper are critically endangered. The bar-tailed godwit is also in trouble.
Mr Roderick said woodlands in the controversial Hunter Economic Zone near Kurri Kurri were important for the critically endangered regent honeyeater and swift parrot.
He said planning decisions made as far back as the 1980s had not caught up "with the reality of the fauna extinction crisis".
"All the woodland out near Edgeworth and Fletcher, for example, is still being cleared. Newcastle is losing the last of its woodlands."
In a submission to the inquiry, Hunter Bird Observers Club called for a federal protection agency with "real teeth and sufficient funding" to enforce new environment laws.
In an interim report, the Senate committee agreed. It recommended that the federal government create an "independent environment protection agency".
It also recommended new environmental laws to replace the present legislation, which is 20 years old.
The report said Australia had "one of the world's worst records for the extinction and lack of protection for threatened fauna".
It was ranked second in the world, behind Indonesia, for "ongoing biodiversity loss".
It cited submissions that indicated more than 10 per cent of Australia's land mammals had become extinct over the past 200 years. This represented half of global mammal extinctions during that period.
The crisis includes the "ongoing decline in the population and conservation status" of almost 500 threatened fauna species in Australia.
