Before the March 2023 election, Chris Minns’ Opposition promised a Great Koala National Park on the north coast if elected to government. This will be one of the last cuts in ‘death by a thousand’ for native forestry in New South Wales.
After the election, it quickly became apparent that National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) were using dodgy numbers to support their Koala Strategy. “Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said gathering accurate data is essential for addressing the decline in numbers. ‘I was shocked to know we really hadn’t done the baseline work,’ she said.”
The Minister blamed the previous government and the bureaucrats quickly jumped to attention. At the start of June 2023, Sharpe announced that a major field survey using sniffer dogs and drones at 1000 sites across NSW had been in progress for a month. “It’s uncovered a new population of 42 koalas at Coolah Tops, north west of Sydney, when the previous government only had five documented koala sightings in the area over the past 70 years.”
Apparently, the bureaucrats had neglected to inform their new Minister that koalas needed to be declining if they were to be saved by new National Parks. They acted with alacrity to improve Sharpe’s understanding. No more results have been forthcoming despite media inquiries. Labor has embraced the Coalition’s cynical $190 million strategy to increase koala numbers. But the 35th Anniversary Koala Summit, scheduled for November 2023 was postponed.
(Koala politics, Vic Jurskis, Australian Rural & Regional News, 7 June 2023)
Instead “NSW Premier Chris Minns, Minister for the Environment Penny Sharpe and Minister for Agriculture and Regional NSW Tara Moriarty visited Bongil Bongil National Park near Coffs Harbour to see firsthand the areas that will form the park and meet scientists who are using drones to improve the accuracy of the NSW koala count”.
Apparently, the decision to create a new Koala Park won’t be affected by any accurate new data. “A Great Koala National Park on the state’s Mid North Coast is a step closer, with the establishment of 3 advisory panels to provide input into the creation of the park.”
On the Government’s first anniversary, they held the Koala Summit behind closed doors. It was a billed as a “a key consultation point [to] hear from a diverse range of stakeholders and inform the government’s work”. AAP reported that “A new road map for the forestry industry is underway in NSW amid deep disquiet about the harm it’s doing to endangered koalas. Environment Minister Penny Sharpe flagged the new forestry plan at a major summit focused on saving the species from extinction in NSW”.
(New forestry plan seeks to avoid koala free future, Canberra Times, 22 March 2024)
Koalas are in no danger of extinction in New South Wales or anywhere else. The government’s own research on the north coast has confirmed that forestry does not affect koala numbers. Also, they were not reduced by the Black Summer megafires because ongoing increases compensated fatalities. But NSW’s Lock It Up and Let It Burn ‘conservation’ paradigm continues unchanged, irrespective of the colours of governments.
At the original NSW Koala Summit in November 1988, under Liberal Environment Minister Tim Moore, NPWS set up the scam. They claimed that koalas had disappeared from more than 180 localities in the State because there were no casual sightings at those places during 1986-87. If a koala had been seen during the previous 65 years from the 1920s to 1985, but not in the previous two years it supposedly proved a local extinction due to ‘habitat loss’. But no information was provided about any clearing.
The “issues facing the remnant koala populations” were “exemplified by examining two case studies – one in the Eden region, the other around Grafton”. In both areas, clearing for agriculture had occurred long ago and the “hilly country remains largely forested and is now principally State Forest”. Habitat loss was not an issue in State Forest then or now.
The case studies had an obvious agenda:
“EDEN. The history of koalas within the Woodchip Agreement Area …”
“GRAFTON. A proposed pulp mill to be located on the Clarence River near Grafton …”
NPWS was concerned with land and resource use, not habitat loss. Koalas were not a threatened species then or now.
They had wrongly been considered extinct through New South Wales and mainland Victoria in the 1930s. But 43 experts at the Taronga Symposium on Koala Biology, Management and Medicine in 1976 had unanimously agreed that “the koala is no longer an endangered species”. The experts said that there were “large growing populations”. Only a decade earlier, in 1966, Professor of Zoology A.J. Marshall had written that “few Australians have ever seen a wild koala”.
Koalas eat soft and juicy young eucalypt shoots which are a rare commodity in healthy mature forests. They were hardly ever seen near Coffs Harbour prior to the 1960s. After World War II, intensive logging with newly available chainsaws and bulldozers started to create dense young forests with virtually unlimited food. Koala numbers increased dramatically.
By 1991, field surveys established that there were three times as many koalas in young regrowth and plantations on the north coast, as there were in old growth forests. Nevertheless, in 1992, NSW listed koalas as a species vulnerable to extinction. In 1995, regrowth forests and plantations were locked up in Bongil Bongil National Park to ‘protect’ koalas.
By that time, increasing ‘protection’ of forests from maintenance by mild burning was affecting forest health. Both young and old forests were beginning to suffer and constantly turn over soft young shoots. Koalas were increasing throughout the forests. But NPWS continued to rely on ineffective and subjectively targeted surveys to promote their story of declining numbers and pursue their land use objectives.
The Grafton development did not proceed, so attention focused on Eden where an established industry was using integrated logging for sawlogs and pulpwood to regenerate productive regrowth forests. NPWS used koalas to ‘save’ forests at Tantawangalo. Meanwhile, radio-tracking research, which found koalas were favouring recently logged coupes over unlogged forest, was shut down.
NPWS turned their attention to Murrah northeast of Bega, claiming that they’d been too late at Tantawangalo. They had to adjust their narrative, explaining that koalas were already extinct there by 1996 because of climate change. It didn’t matter that they’d found some dung at Tantawangalo and reported it in 2010: “these pellets were re-examined and could not be confidently attributed to koalas”. It didn’t matter that a koala had been seen there in 2013 and reported to NPWS: “a koala sighting does not make a population”.
Daniel Lunney and co-authors defended their paper titled “Extinction in Eden: identifying the role of climate change in the decline of the koala in south-eastern NSW” with this statement published by the same reputable scientific journal: “The argument over purported extinctions is a distraction”.
NPWS / Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) now claimed that there were only a handful of koalas left in the Eden Region, hanging on in a purported climate refuge at Murrah. In fact, koalas at Murrah were irrupting in a mixture of dense regrowth, from intensive logging and/or wildfire in 1980, and unlogged forest. Both young and old forests were suffering from lack of mild burning.
But the “distraction” was successfully avoided. In 2016, timber resources at Murrah were locked up in apparent contravention of the Regional Forest Agreement. A rather unusual arrangement reserved four areas of State Forest under the Forestry Act but placed them under the authority of NPWS.
At the same time, NSW’s Chief Scientist conducted an Independent Review into the Decline of Koala Populations in Key Areas of NSW. It was based on a few ‘case studies’ by an individual who happened to be an officer of NPWS/OEH but apparently not an official representative. The Chief Scientist’s review did not identify that three of the purportedly declining ‘populations’ at Campbelltown, Coffs Harbour and Murrah were actually irrupting in numbers.
NSW released a $45 million Koala Strategy in 2018, which aimed to “stabilise and then increase koala numbers”, mainly by creating 24,000 hectares of new koala parks. Meanwhile, NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) published scientific research utilising effective survey technology and showing that koala numbers were five times higher than previously thought on the north coast and were not affected in any way by logging.
(Passive acoustics and sound recognition provide new insight on status and resilience of an iconic endangered marsupial (koala Phascolarctos cinereus) to timber harvesting, Bradley S Law et al, PLOS One, 31 October 2018)
Sound recording surveys showed that koalas were in even higher densities at Murrah than on the north coast.
In 2019, the NSW Upper House Planning and Environment Committee, chaired by The Green’s Cate Faehrmann, set up an inquiry into Koala Populations and Habitat. While they were hearing evidence and deliberating, a lightning strike started what would become a record wildfire from a natural ignition, more than half a million hectares, in ‘protected’ koala habitat in the Blue Mountains wilderness.
As the megafire was raging, Science for Wildlife told the Inquiry that koalas had started “popping up” during the previous 2013 wildfires in the Blue Mountains. Now “Everywhere we look we find a lot of koalas – a young and expanding population”. Retired NPWS officer Daniel Lunney told them that in 1994 koalas had reoccupied areas burnt by crownfires at Port Stevens within months and produced young within a year.
Nevertheless, the NSW Koala Inquiry reported in June 2020 that, given the loss of koalas in the Black Summer megafires, koalas will be extinct by 2050 unless there’s urgent government intervention to protect habitat. In February 2022, the Federal Environment Minister, acting on advice from the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, declared koalas north of the Victorian border an endangered species.
(Koalas now considered endangered in NSW, Queensland and the ACT, ABC News, 11 February 2022)
That advice was not based empirical data. The Koala Scam continues to rely upon opinion from experts who style themselves after the Oracles of Delphi: “A quantitative, scientific method for deriving estimates of koala populations and trends was possible, in the absence of empirical data on abundances”.
In May 2022, NSW DPI and Natural Resources Commission (NRC) quietly released a report stating that koala numbers on the north coast had remained stable for the previous five years despite the Black Summer holocaust. More precise data published in three separate scientific papers showed that numbers actually continued to increase. But NRC and DPI combined them with less precise data over a wider region, masking the ongoing increases in coastal regrowth forests.
(Koalas and bushfires, Vic Jurskis, Australian Rural & Regional News, 13 September 2022; More of the great koala scam, Vic Jurskis, Australian Rural & Regional News, 27 September 2022)
One would think it was good news that koalas hadn’t been pushed to the brink by the megafires. But bureaucrats certainly didn’t shout it from the rooftops. Others, apparently happy now that koalas were officially endangered, couldn’t help themselves. For example, ‘citizen scientists’ revealed that they had found lots of “previously undocumented” koalas in Heathcote National Park on the southern edge of Sydney.
In June 2022 academics from ANU announced a “surprise” find of koalas in Kosciuszko National Park. They were in the Byadbo Wilderness which had been incinerated in 1988 and 2003. The extreme conditions of the Black Summer fires had moderated before they burnt into the western and southern edges of the wilderness.
Efficient and effective surveys detected 14 male koalas at Byadbo compared to only 16 koala sightings in the whole of Kosciuszko over more than 80 years previously. But experts seemed to think that having a National Park explained the find rather than effective surveys: “It’s in a secure place,” Professor Lindenmayer said. “Yes, it burns, but not all of it burns. Yes, it gets hot, but many places don’t”.
News Corp further muddied the waters, ‘informing’ their target audience of 3 to 12-year-old kids that “The koala population shrunk since European settlement from millions down to less than 100,000, according to the Australian Koala Foundation, driven mostly by logging and climate change. Against these impacts, Kosciuszko National Park offered an “insurance population”, Professor Lindenmayer said”.
(New Kosciuszko koalas adapted to survive, KidsNews, 8 June 2022; Koala population discovered in NSW Kosciuszko National Park shows signs of climate change resilience, ABC News, 2 June 2022)
It is an historical fact that koalas irrupted after European settlement and did not reach millions until a century later. The AKF has stated that numbers crashed as a result of hunting for the fur trade. In fact, koalas numbers continued to increase as they were hunted because survival of juveniles increased as mortality of adults allowed them to obtain food.
Unsustainably high numbers of koalas crashed during the Federation Drought whilst koalas in naturally low densities were unaffected. Koala numbers have not been reduced anywhere at any time by logging or climate change.
Recently, as koalas continued to increase in forests and invade suburbia, disease, dog attacks and vehicle injuries also increased. For example, in two months from July 2022, 30 koalas including four mothers carrying young were rescued by carers in Tweed Shire on the north coast. One koala was found up a tree in the middle of Murwillimbah.
(Thirty koalas hit on roads, attacked by dogs in recent weeks, Tweed Shire Council, 21 September 2022)
So-called community consultation on the Great Koala Park and the Koala Strategy has continued after the closed-door Summit. Premier Minns is already preparing to claim credit for the increasing numbers of koalas that are still being hidden by the bureaucracy. “Inaction and neglect by the previous Coalition government saw the koala officially listed as endangered in New South Wales. Creating a Great Koala National Park will turn around the animal’s grim trajectory.”
New data from field surveys of 1000 sites, trumpeted by the incoming Environment Minister and commenced a year ago, will not be released in time to stimulate or inform public submissions on the Koala Strategy. The closing date is on Friday after Anzac Day. The result is preordained.
Lock It Up and Let It Burn will be confirmed as our conservation paradigm, except where clearing is essential to promote fake renewables. The Koala Industry will prosper on government subsidies and private donations whilst koala suffering increases with numbers. Truly endangered species will continue their downward spiral as habitat is obliterated by proliferation of explosive scrub and massive uncounted emissions, pollution, erosion and siltation from preventable megafires.
Our most energy-efficient, renewable natural resource industry will soon be extinguished.
Vic Jurskis has written two books published by Connor Court, Firestick Ecology and The Great Koala Scam.
This article relates to the ongoing debates on Australian Rural & Regional News into Koalas and also into Bushfires, Logging, Burns & Forest Management.
