Opinion: A balanced approach to koala conservationThursday 17 Apr 2025
Whether managed as national park or state forest, science-based active forest management – the thoughtful and deliberate tending of forests – will be crucial to maintaining and enhancing Australia’s forests, responding to climate change and conserving koala habitat. Simply creating a national park does not guarantee biodiversity conservation. There is no doubt when managed well, national parks benefit the environment and communities by conserving biodiversity, providing for recreational opportunities and cultural wellbeing, storing carbon and providing clean water. State forests, also provide all of these values, along with recreation and eco-tourism opportunities, timber and non-timber forest products. The effective conservation benefit provided by state forests has been demonstrated by recent research that shows koala numbers remain high and stable in NSW state forest. However, this is not a guarantee, for example, in Booderee National Park, severe declines in native animal species have occurred. Potoroos and bandicoots have had to be re-introduced from nearby state forest after becoming locally extinct within the national park. In the Pilliga Forest the thriving population of koala declined following conversion of state forest areas to conservation reserves. This decline is attributed to changes in management that previously encouraged the growth of eucalypt species favoured by koalas. Given this, it is critical that these lessons be learned and applied if the Great Koala National Park is to truly conserve koala. Equally, it is important to understand the consequences of removing sustainable, renewable, modest and highly regulated native forest timber supply from state forests when creating the new Great Koala National Park. Research has shown that when Australian hardwood timber from native forests becomes unavailable, it is mostly replaced by imported timber, concrete, steel or fibre cement – only in relatively few cases is it replaced by Australian plantation products. The products that predominantly replace native forest timber products have high carbon cost, are less environmentally friendly and represent a much greater sovereign risk. Some groups advocate for Australia to rely solely on plantations for its timber supply. However, claims that such a transition can be done easily are false and oversimplistic. For now, we simply do not have sufficient plantations to replace the wood products sourced from native forests. More >> Source: Forestry Australia  | ||
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