- TIMBERBIZ.COM.AU - A La Une - 25/Aug 00:21

Not one koala to benefit from a great koala park

The NSW Government is set to announce the formation of the Great Koala National Park on the Mid North Coast of NSW in order to save the koala population. The new park will surely gladden the hearts of activists everywhere and justify the millions of dollars generated by the outrage factory over many years. Source: Tim Lester, AFCA CEO And not a single koala will be saved. The study conducted by NSW National Parks as part of the assessment for the park showed that the koala habitation in the state forest is the same as the national park next door. The regulations, management and controls mean harvesting crews spot and avoid koalas, protect and preserve important trees, enhance forest health and make space for habitat and production trees of the future. Condemning a forest to a future of benign neglect is the worst possible outcome but the most likely one. Consider the case of the Pilliga Forest in north west NSW. In 2005 a productive industry in that area was scaled back to set aside forest for environmental conservation. The population of koalas at the time was 30,000 across 500,000 hectares, at the time the only known population in all of NSW to be increasing. Industry must have been the problem. Today the population of koalas, in an area 187 times the size of Greater Sydney, is 50. Clearly, industry was the problem. Under a conservationist approach management for forest health stopped. We stopped maintaining mixed species and having multiple aged trees. Food for koalas disappeared. We stopped investing in invasive weed and pest control, not because we wanted to but because it is too big a job for too few people over too large an area and that is much too expensive. So it became harder for koalas to move through the forest and they were more likely to be dinner for a fox or cat. But the real kicker is the struggle to effectively control the now inevitable fires that rage through unmanaged scrub. More than two thirds of the Pilliga Forest burnt in 2019-20 and about a quarter this last summer. In part because we had lost the skilled, experienced and capable people and their equipment who knew the bush and were on hand to step in when needed. But industry was the problem! This is not just an issue affecting the forest but it also affects the towns. Places you’ve probably never heard of like Barradine and Gwabegar. Soon to be places like Dorrigo, Bellingen and Bowraville. Because a forestry job is stable and secure, with an earning capacity two and a half times the average of hospitality. With a forestry job you can work hard and earn good money in rural areas, be home with your family every night and available to volunteer in your community. You can’t do that with a job that has you working nights and weekends, or one that is fly-in fly-out for weeks at a time. The new area of park is rumoured to be 176,000 hectares (66 times the size of Greater Sydney, estimated koala population between 12,111 and 14,541) of which 100,000 hectares is already protected for conservation. Industry, the extreme pro-forestry activists that we are, suggested to government that a medium-sized park would deliver the government’s commitment and balance important conservation with sustainable production. But industry with its stable jobs, support for communities, more than a century of real-world forest management experience and 2.5 times multiplier on economic activity, must be the problem. Instead of the win-win that we could have had the state of NSW is going to lose about a third of its native timber production capacity and hundreds of millions of dollars of income. It will lose the ability to produce power poles, timber wharves, high value feature timbers, decking and more. It will export jobs and carbon and sovereign capacity. The uncertainty and reduced activity will affect the rest of the forest products sector at the very time we need more timber and wood fibre of all kinds for sustainability, renewability and climate sensitivity. It will also put more pressure in the international market which is already awash with illegal timber, threatening Sumatran tigers, Congolese gorillas and Amazonian tamarins. And not a single koala will be saved.