Community and Scientists Work Together to Identify Koalas Within the Plantations Inside the Proposed Great Koala National Park in New South Wales, Australia

There is a widespread belief that koala conservation measures should be focused on ending forestry operations in native forests and that plantations should be the alternative source for timber. While advocates for conservation continue to promote this strategic approach, they overlook the fact that hardwood plantations also provide important habitats. Ongoing operations in both natural and planted forests continue to threaten the viability of the koala species, and populations in one of the koala’s core habitats in northern New South Wales (NSW) continue to decline. To improve conservation outcomes for this species in the wild, the Great Koala National Park (GKNP) has been proposed. While the process of establishing this park continues, ongoing forestry operations exert continuous pressure on koalas and their habitat within the proposed area of the park. This paper investigates how community stakeholders are collaborating with scientists to identify areas of high koala habitat value within the hardwood eucalypt plantations inside the proposed GKNP that are currently excluded from conservation and will be subject to ongoing timber extraction. Investigations of Tuckers Nob State Forest, which is inside the proposal area, confirmed the presence of both koalas and original forest inside the plantations which were excluded from conservation by the state government. Original trees and remnants were identified using historical aerial photography, which were orthorectified and matched against current NSW government imagery (SIX Maps); composite mosaics of photographic sheets and closeups (Quantum GIS) were imported into Google Earth Pro. Koala drone surveys, habitat ground-truthing, and on-ground scat and koala surveys of 120 ha involving various community stakeholders were conducted in December 2024 and revealed 25 koalas, necessitating the reclassification of this area from plantation to prime koala habitat. Here, as in many other plantations in NSW, the findings of this study indicate significant numbers of original trees that are part of highly diverse nutrient-rich sites attractive to koalas. This leads to the conclusion that the exclusion of specific areas of the proposed park from conservation to allow for ongoing logging is inconsistent with recognized koala protection strategies. Hence, koala protection strategies need to consider the integrity of the reserve system in its entirety, and the whole area of the GKNP should be accorded the requisite status of a World Heritage Site.