This article relates to the ongoing discussion on Australian Rural & Regional News: Open for Debate: Koalas

Vic Jurskis

Laura Chung from Sydney Morning Herald tells us “Members of one of the healthiest koala populations in Sydney are dying at an alarming rate, as chlamydia-infected koalas and housing development” get closer.

Makes you wonder how many different koala ‘populations’ there are in our State Capital. Chung’s map shows us she’s talking about the koalas north of Appin Road at Appin, because koalas on the opposite side of the road have chlamydiosis. The healthy subpopulation on the north side of the road extends all the way to our lonely old nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights.

Greens leader Cate Faehrmann says “One of the key recommendations in the Chief Scientist’s report into the protection of Campbelltown’s koalas was building a number of underpasses or overpasses along Appin Road. It’s inexcusable that these still haven’t been built”. So the Chief Scientist apparently reckons we must help the endangered, diseased koalas cross the road to mix with their endangered, healthy friends.

Faehrmann chaired the NSW Koala Inquiry which ‘found’ that koalas are heading for extinction. She reports that despite the Chief Scientist outlining what was necessary to ‘save’ Campbelltown’s koalas, the number of rescue call-outs has increased dramatically in the last three years. Faehrmann’s very concerned because she reckons there’s only 300 koalas in the area.

Chung helpfully provided the statistics highlighting the ‘problem’. Between 2013 and 2021, 652 koalas died or were rescued by carers. There were 102 deaths that we know of, so there must have been 550 successful rescues. Each of the current ‘population’ of about 300 koalas must have been rescued once or twice.

Apparently, the koalas don’t want to be saved. I can certainly understand their confusion.

Of course, the Chief Scientist, the politician and the journalist have all got it completely wrong. There were no koalas anywhere near Campbelltown when Europeans arrived. By the late Nineteenth Century, they’d irrupted into plagues. People were shooting the overcrowded, diseased koalas and selling their skins.

But the more adults that were shot, the more young survived to breed. The irruption continued until the Federation Drought frizzled soft young leaves. Trees and koalas died. By the 1930s, koalas were supposedly extinct in New South Wales. In 1966, Foundation Professor of Zoology at Monash University, Jock Marshall, said few Aussies had ever seen a wild koala. But natural, invisible, low-density subpopulations survived in forests.

As clearing and climate change progressed, koalas irrupted again. Only a decade later, in 1976, 43 koala experts attended a symposium at Taronga Park Zoo. They unanimously agreed that koalas were increasing everywhere and in no danger of extinction. After another decade, in 1988,  NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) decided to use ‘cute and cuddly’ koalas in a campaign to stop logging and convert State Forests into National Parks. They’ve been hugely successful.

WIRES koala coordinator for Wollondilly, Emma Meadows, has now stated the obvious. She “helped save koalas for the past five-and-a-half years, and said there had been a sharp increase in the number injured and killed each year. She puts it down to an increase in koalas …”. 

So NPWS have been caught out. Our new State Labor Government has realised that data from effective surveys shows that koalas are everywhere and increasing.

Problem is, they’ve promised a Great Koala National Park to ‘save’ the increasing koalas from logging, which has been proven to have no effect on numbers of koalas.

New South Wales Department of Primary Industries has published data showing that koala numbers increased through recent logging and through the Black Summer fires on NSW’s north coast. They collaborated with Natural Resources Commission (NRC) to downplay the findings, diluting the numbers with data from lower density, hinterland subpopulations. They reported that koala numbers remained stable over five years including Black Summer.

So Premier Chris Minns has a terrible dilemma. It is a known scientific fact that koalas are increasing. They are in no danger, but his government can’t claim credit for the great ‘news’. Minns made an election promise to save them from logging, by creating a Great Koala National Park. I’d advise him to make a name for himself in history by saving our last major renewable native resource industry. Let the highly paid bureaucrats – Chief Scientist, Commissioner of NRC, Directors of DPI and NPWS, etc. take the consequences as the truth inevitably emerges.

Australian Rural & Regional News welcomes and has invited a response to this article from Cate Faehrmann MLC.

Vic Jurskis has written two books published by Connor Court, Firestick Ecology and The Great Koala Scam.