Great Koala National Park

Walk out your front door and look down the street.   If you are in the regions or in suburbia, then you will look at a tall wooden pole that carries the cables that gives you electricity. Have you taken much notice of them?   Probably not, but the pole is native hardwood harvested from a native forest where, through the application of science, it was encouraged to grow that straight.   Timber power poles are selectively harvested from regrowth or working forests.

The Clarence Valley timber industry is still uncertain how many jobs could be lost due to the suspension of logging in the proposed Great Koala National Park as the NSW Government assesses the impact on the endangered marsupials and timber industry jobs ... “They still haven’t actually said what the areas are that they are going to not harvest in and where the actual koala hubs are, so it’s really hard to work out what the ramifications are going to be”: Donna Layton, Marshall Notaras Hardwoods GM and VP of Timber NSW.

The Minns Government’s proposed Great Koala National Park is not an extinction panacea for koalas, says the President of Forestry Australia, Dr Michelle Freeman ... "it is simplistic to suggest that locking away forests is the great panacea for saving koalas from extinction ... In fact, experience shows us that declaring a National Park does not equal koala population growth."  

The NSW Government has announced the process to establish the Great Koala National Park, as well as a halt to timber harvesting operations in the 106 koala hubs within the area being assessed for the park ... ARR.News asked some questions of the Minister about koala surveys and research indicating that properly conducted forestry does not adversely impact koala numbers. A departmental spokesperson responded.

ARR.News sought the response of FCNSW regarding recent protests against native forest logging, recent timber harvesting and plans for harvesting in the site of the proposed Great Koala National Park and measures to prevent injury to koalas and other wildlife.

Vic Jurskis. The facts haven’t deterred the ecowarriors of North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) from trying to hasten the demise of the sustainable, renewable, solar-powered native timber industry. They don’t care about habitat for people, other than themselves. They’ve launched an application for an injunction to ‘save’ the overcrowded koalas that are breeding more rapidly than ever on all the soft new growth resprouting after the Black Summer holocaust that they helped to create.

Vic Jurskis's clear account of the history of the cycle of plagues and crashes of koalas in Australia's eastern states and the circumstances of those plagues and crashes makes one question whether the time frame for assessing the status of koalas should be 200 years, not 20, and whether the public perception about this much-loved animal is fully informed.

Despite the public perception that the only way to protect species is to create more conservation reserves, Forestry Australia’s view is that koala recovery can best be achieved through a landscape-wide approach to active management of these populations and their forest habitats across all land tenures. There is considerable evidence that the National Park estate is continuing to be degraded due to unnatural fire regimes, pests and diseases, and a lack of active management to mitigate their impacts.

On the evening of 8 June 2022, the Great Koala Protected Area Bill 2021 was debated in the New South Wales Upper House. The debate demonstrates the complexities and many of the fundamental points of disagreement relating to the protection of koalas in New South Wales.

New South Wales Government Minister Kean, Minister for the Environment, constantly says he "follows the science". A noble ideal, but only if what he is sprouting is science.