The swift parrot recovery plan announced by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, to mark threatened species day was not actually finalised and had not been shared with the experts who helped to develop it.

Release of the plan was news to the official recovery team for the swift parrot.

“The crux of the issue is the minister put out a media release saying the recovery plan has been released and yet no one on the recovery team had seen it,” said Mick Roderick, BirdLife Australia’s representative on the recovery team.

Dr Dejan Stojanovic, a conservation scientist at the Australian National University and a swift parrot recovery team member for more than a decade, said a version of the plan had not been circulated for years.

Stojanovic said it was a “Lost opportunity” to develop a plan to end decades of damage from forestry that was “Pushing the swift parrot to extinction”.