The Great Koala National Park has been announced at long last, bringing to an end a decade-long campaign to create the world’s biggest koala sanctuary in northern NSW.
More than ten years ago, retired conservation land manager Ashley Love envisaged a way to counter the alarming decline of the koala in NSW. The vision for a truly great conservation reserve was widely embraced by environment groups. Yesterday’s announcement by the Minns Government brings to fruition a promise made in 2015 by former Labor leader, Luke Foley, to create that Great Koala National Park.
The logging industry has consistently lobbied for a tiny park - as little as a fifth of the proposed area - so that most of this critical koala stronghold could continue to be heavily logged. In a significant victory for conservation, the entire assessment area - 176,000 hectares of State Forests - will be added to the Park. As of today, all logging within the Park’s boundary has ended completely.
The creation of this Great Koala National Park will provide habitat for more than a hundred threatened species, including an estimated 12,000 koalas and 36,000 greater gliders. It is the most significant outcome for forest conservation in NSW in the last 25 years.
But this win is just a stepping stone to the state-wide protection of our public native forests. There are countless areas of high conservation value across NSW that desperately need protection, like Tallaganda - a key stronghold of the endangered greater glider.
It was only a few weeks ago that the EPA filed 29 charges against Forestry Corporation NSW for illegal logging of Tallaganda in what is likely the biggest case ever brought against the State-owned corporation. With this legal action in the pipeline and now a huge reduction in native forest logging across North East NSW, a complete end to native forest logging appears well within reach.
The formal declaration of the park will take another twelve months. During this time the NSW Government will seek to obtain Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) for the creation of the Park, threatening that the reserve may not go ahead if they are unsuccessful. This conservation outcome should not be dependent on a carbon credit scheme, and we urge the NSW Government to prioritise our environment and ensure the Park is declared no matter what.
Our work over the next twelve months will seek to build on this momentum to end native forest logging and ensure the threatened species and critical ecosystems outside of the Great Koala National Park are also protected - we won’t stop until we get the lot!
We’d like to acknowledge the dedicated work of Ashley Love, National Parks Association NSW, North East Forest Alliance, Nature Conservation Council, Bellingen Environment Centre, Blicks River Guardians, Gumbaynggirr Conservation Group, Mark Graham and all other groups, community members and First Nations people that contributed to this outcome. We’d also like to thank our partners in this campaign, Global Conservation and Paul Hilton, for their support and contributions to achieving this outcome and helping us save the Koala from extinction in NSW.
Thank you for supporting our campaign, sharing our message, and taking action. This victory is as much yours as it is anyone else's.