Imlay Mallee
On 24 November 1939, the Coffs Harbour Advocate reported, among other things, that “now there are only 200 known koalas in the whole of New South Wales, including those in captivity”.
NSW Environment Minister Sharpe’s media release of 3 December 2024 stated, “that our grandchildren will never get the chance to see koalas in the wild”. I thought she may have been a little behind in reading her ministerial briefings. But then the penny dropped!
The current commitment to the Great Koala National Park is an example of political and activist NGO scare campaign, using out of date expert elicitations or population guestimates to mislead the public on the alleged need for more national parks to protect koalas. In the case of Minister Sharpe, it has become obvious that out of date koala population estimates suit her eco-political agenda.
Prior to the last election, the now Environment Minster Sharpe announced that the Minns government would establish the Great Koala National Park (GKNP) – 300,000 hectares of koala habitat protected from logging, stretching from Kempsey to Coffs Harbour. Minister Shape is taking a lead role in the koala campaign to spend potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on koalas and the GKNP, while over a thousand more threatened species receive little or no funding.
Why does the Minister and others never ask, if state forests have been managed for multiple uses, including timber production for over 100 years and have so much biodiversity, why do these forests need to be “protected” in national parks?
The CSIRO national koala monitoring program April 2024 report provides koala population estimates for NSW, ACT and Qld ranging from 117,050 to 244,440. The Victorian and SA population is estimated to range from 170,780 to 383,570. This gives a national population estimate of 287,830 to 628,010 koalas, which suggests there is absolutely no risk of koala extinction by 2050.
The reason there is so much fuss about the NSW, ACT and Qld populations, is the decision of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee to make the one-off use of the provisions of Section 517 of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and split a genetically identical koala species into two species, based on state borders.
It has not yet been revealed why Minister Sharpe and environment department bureaucrats continue to ignore the latest and much higher estimates from the koala population review by CSIRO. Using out of date guesstimates rather than more recent monitoring derived data does provide more justification for the Great Koala National Park (GKNP) proposal. This scare mongering may also explain why there was an attempt to add koalas to the list of species covered by the Environment Department’s severe and irreversible impact guidelines. See section 6.5 of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.
The listing of koalas in the ACT, NSW and Queensland has been a boon for activist politicians and NGOs, to ramp up the use of koalas as a scare mongering political and fundraising tool. The political and activist campaigning around koalas is potentially misdirecting conservation spending by NSW government agencies. Excerpts from the NSW budget estimate hearings on 23 August 2022 give an insight into this issue.
The Hon Penny Sharpe: “But the thing that I am very concerned about is that previously, at the end of 2020-21, the figures were that 262 species were on track to be secure in the wild. In this year’s budget papers, it’s down to 150.”
Mr James Griffin: “The koala strategy, the single biggest investment in any species—”
The Hon Penny Sharpe: “I’m aware of that $193 million. Thank you, Minister.”
Dean Knudson: “The investment in Saving our Species is $15 million a year so, $75 million over the five years.”
Meanwhile, in areas under the Minister’s portfolio the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NP&WS) September 2021 Zero Extinctions report, it states on page one:
Our protected areas provide a vital refuge for many of these threatened species.
In New South Wales (NSW), around 85% of all species threatened with extinction are represented on the national park estate. Most are endemic to Australia or NSW – found nowhere else in the world.
However, even on the NSW national park estate, the future for these approximately 800 species is threatened by feral animals, weeds, altered fire regimes, the impact of climate change and other threats.”
On page two the report states: “There is evidence that the overall decline in biodiversity in NSW is occurring even in the national park estate. Key threats affecting threatened species populations in national parks include feral predators and other feral animals; invasive weeds; changed fire regimes; and a range of impacts associated with climate change. On park declines are occurring, or have occurred, in a range of threatened species including small to medium-sized mammals, woodland birds, koalas and gliders, frogs and a range of plant species.”
While all the media, activist and public attention is focused on koalas and denigrating anyone who is not wedded to the activist driven GKNP, the Minister gets a free pass for her failure to ensure threatened and other species receive appropriate funding and management.
One of many species genuinely threatened with extinction is Eucalyptus Imlayensis, the Imlay Mallee. Mt Imlay National Park was dedicated in 1972, and the Imlay Mallee was discovered by white fellas in 1977.
The population was surveyed in 2007, and the number of mature individuals was estimated to be about 80. The difficult terrain and the close proximity of some individuals (which may have been one or several plants) meant that a more accurate count could not be made.
Twenty-three seedlings planted in 2011, and a smaller number planted in later years were all killed by a high intensity bushfire on 4 January 2020. Surviving mature Imlay Mallee were suckering from their lignotubers, after being burnt.
Latest publicly available information is that there are 48 Imlay Mallee root masses with four-year-old coppice regrowth, down from an estimated 70 mature plants before the 2019-20 high intensity bushfire killed a third of the population.
Where is the ministerial, activist and public outrage about this pending extinction?
Instead, the Minister pillories three National Party members for not being supporters of the GKNP. These members are trying to deliver positive triple bottom line outcomes for their electorates. They may have a much better understanding than the Minister, that activists pushing a pseudo environmental policy will deliver perverse social, environmental and economic outcomes to their communities and the forests in their electorates.
When will the Minister shed her long held cloak of activism and insist that National Parks and Environment department staff develop active and adaptive management plans for the NSW conservation reserve system?
Peter Rutherford is secretary South East Timber Association
