The NSW government will spend $193 million on a range of koala conservation measures including purchasing and restoring key habitat as part of its commitment to double the animals’ numbers in the state by 2050.
Koala numbers have fallen so drastically over recent years that they were declared vulnerable in 2012 and endangered in February this year in Queensland, NSW and the ACT.
Koalas in a breeding program at the Australian Reptile Park.
Experts still debate how many survive, but it is estimated as many as one-third of NSW’s koalas – about 10,000 animals – died in the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires and the preceding drought, and Queensland’s population shrunk by about 50 per cent in the past decade.
By comparison it is estimated that 600,000 koalas were shot by hunters for fur over a single month in the last legal “open season” on the animal in Queensland in 1927.
Environment Minister James Griffin said the funding was the largest commitment to a single species in Australia.
“We know there are multiple threats to koalas, including loss and fragmentation of their
habitat, compounded by the impact of the devastating 2019–20 bushfires, as well as
vehicle strike and dog attack.”
An injured koala at Mallacoota Incident Control Centre.
The package includes $107.1 million for koala habitat conservation to fund the protection, restoration and improved management of 47,000 hectares of koala habitat, as well as $43.4 million to support science and research to build our knowledge of koalas. Other funding will support local communities to conserve koalas and establishing a translocation program.
Koala protection has been a contentious internal issue for the Coalition government, with Nationals opposing measures that might have regulated clearing on private land in koala habitat or the creation of a Great Koala National Park on the state’s north coast.
Proposals like this threatened to split the Coalition in 2020 in a dispute between the parties that became known as the koala wars.
By contrast this strategy does not regulate private land use or restrict the forestry industry. It focuses on measures like purchasing private land and working with willing landholders as well as communities and environment groups.
“Protecting and restoring habitat will also support other threatened and endangered species, such as powerful owls and glossy black cockatoos,” Mr Griffin said.
Stuart Blanch, a senior manager with WWF, which is working with the government on elements of the strategy, welcomed the package saying that it provided substantial funding and specific goals.
But he noted that it did not address land clearing, which he said was the single greatest threat to koalas along with climate change.
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NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann, who chaired an Upper House inquiry into koalas, criticised the lack of action on land clearing.
“The only strategy koalas needed from this government was one that stopped their habitat being cleared for agriculture, development and forestry,” she said.
“What koalas needed was a commitment to end the destruction of their habitat, particularly after so much was lost during the fires.
“The government should have spent $195 million on ending logging in koala habitat including developing a jobs transition plan for forestry workers.”
A spokesman for the North East Forest Alliance, Dailan Pugh, also criticised the strategy for not doing enough to protect habitat on private land or prevent logging in state forests in habitat areas.
“The centrepiece of the NSW Koala Strategy is to spend $71 million on private lands, buying properties and implementing conservation agreements over up to 22,000 hectares,” he said.
“This will not compensate for the Liberal’s promises to the Nationals, as peace terms in the 2020 Koala Wars, to remove the requirement to obtain permission before clearing core koala habitat, to end the prohibition on logging core Koala habitat, to open up all environmental zones for logging, and to stop core Koala habitat being added to environmental zones.
“Similarly their strategy to spend $31.5 million to restore and plant new koala habitat could help, but only if they first stopped clearing and logging existing koala habitat.”
Habitat destruction has left koala populations fragmented and stressed, leaving them more vulnerable to diseases such as chlamydia, said Mr Blanch. Meanwhile drought caused by climate change has left koala habitat more prone to bushfire and changed the nutrients in the leaves of feed trees, which has forced more koalas to move around on the ground, leaving them vulnerable to car strikes and dog attacks.
In recent extreme heatwaves experts have reported seeing dehydrated and overheated koalas forced from their trees to find shelter from heat.
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