Koalas need you!

I had an email today from the Koala Clancy Foundation.  They need our support, and so do koalas. 

You see, in New South Wales, the Government promised the Great Koala National Park.    You can see the history behind this here.

The Great Koala National Park will reserve over 176,000 hectares of state forest and then connect with existing national parks and reserves, making up a whopping 476,000 hectares of protected forest – so it’s a very significant initiative.

In 2010, koala expert Ashley Love raised money among five local groups and also engaged an ecologist to map the mid-north coast koala populations. He selected the most important habitat, and also the vital linking corridors as a proposed reserve.  And Love put that forward as the Great Koala National Park. 

The plan is that it become a centrepiece of koala conservation – surely a must-see destination for anyone who loves nature and koalas.   The proposed park will reserve over 176,000 hectares of state forest.  You can see the map here.

In January 2015, Luke Foley (Labour minister) who had been inspired by the giant panda reserves in China, announced a plan to create a Great Koala National Park, and the plan was again proposed in 2019 by the Labour Party under their leader Michael Daley.  Neither plan went forward as the party weren’t elected, and the current iteration of the park was proposed again in 2023 during the state election campaign.  A koala summit was also proposed to formulate a strategy to revitalise the species.

Labour Party’s Chris Minns was duly elected as premier, and Penny Sharp the environment minister – planning for the new national park began.  It even had the state government investing $80 million to start the project. 

Unfortunately, the state government is considering leveraging the powers of the federal government to use their carbon credit scheme for this project.  

It means using the national park to generate carbon offsets.   This means that big polluters can buy them – and keep burning fossil fuels.  This means, says the Koala Clancy Foundation, that the carbon credits will “delay the genuine emission cuts, harm country, and hold our koalas hostage.”

If this goes through, it will affect koalas Australia-wide. The fight back has started:

Koala Clancy Foundation joined forces with over 30 Australian grassroots conservation groups to send a joint statement to federal Senators.  They made it clear that the INFM carbon scam must be rejected.   Premier Chris Minns must deliver the Great Koala National Park as promised.  

They have reached out to the media with a national media release to make sure everyone knows the truth about these carbon credits – and the government’s broken promises.

The Senate vote on the INFM bill will now take place on 15th September 2026.  This buys a bit of time to stop the INFM in its tracks.

1.        Sign the Petition urging Premier Chris Minns to give us our Great Koala National Park now – no tricks, no offsets.

2.        Please share any content or updates you see from koala conservation groups on social media

We all need to make as much noise as possible for koalas!  

Please get noisy for koalas!

The lovely photo at the top of this blog is by David Clode on Unsplash. Thank you David!