Australian Koala Foundation calls for moratorium on critical Koala habitats in NSW, QLD and ACT
Koalas are listed as ‘Endangered’ in NSW, Queensland and ACT but only ‘Vulnerable’ in Victoria and South Australia.
The current ‘Endangered’ listing for the Koala does not protect Koalas in either Victoria nor South Australia. Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) says that it is to protect the plantation logging industry, particularly in Victoria.
The current government estimation of Koala populations in Victoria as 450,000 were just not possible.
“There is not enough habitat for that many Koalas. I suspect what has happened is that someone has done a rough calculation like 180,000 of Blue Gum plantations with two koalas per hectare.
Truly, if that was the case, Koalas would be hanging out of trams in the Melbourne CBD.”
“I do wonder whether the Minister will really want to tell the Australian public that she actually cannot stop a lot of the logging occurring right now, because of the Regional Forest Agreements.
“This is a law that gives certainty to logging contractors and those documents are very powerful – which means logging cannot be stopped.”
“The Minister must call a halt to the clearing of habitats that sustain Koalas.
Chair of the Australian Koala Foundation, Deborah Tabart OAM said
Lily D’Ambrosio MP is the Minister for Environment and Climate Action in Victoria.
The word Koala does not even appear on Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority‘s website
In a submission to the 2021 Inquiry into Ecosystem Decline in Victoria, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) reported that habitat loss is continuing today at a rate of approximately 4,000 hectares per year.
The Victorian Environment and Planning Committee made 74 Recommendations to address the range of problems associated with that state’s rapidly declining eco-system.
The Victorian Government is required to respond in writing within six months of the report being tabled. The inquiry’s report and recommendations were tabled in Parliament on 2 December 2021. “The time for action is now,” the report said in 2021.
As of today, 4 December 2022, more than a year later, the Government’s response is not on the Parliament’s website
Lily D’Ambrosio MP is the Minister for Environment and Climate Action in Victoria
The 2021 Inquiry included a submission from Macedon Ranges Shire Council which said that much of the environmental data in the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas relevant to the Macedon Ranges is outdated—for example, mapping of local koala populations.
It suggested that, as the Atlas informs decision-making by the Victorian Government, the Council may be passed over when environmental priorities are being set as their local biodiversity values are not being recognised:
A council area might not come up well because it is just not surveyed well and that information is not on a state government system, but that does not mean that those things do not exist.
Macedon Ranges Shire Council
Lisa Pittle, Manager of Environment at Nillumbik Shire Council, said that environmental planning overlays are only as strong as the environmental data they are based on.
She noted that the Council’s overlays are based on data from the 1990s and would benefit from being updated.
The inquiry heard extensive evidence, both in submissions and from witnesses, that native forest logging is driving ecosystem and threatened species decline.
For example, evidence provided by Professor David Lindenmeyer included the following:
“There is work that indicates in Australia—published by James Watson—that over 70 species are at risk from logging operations.
There is also a significant effect of logging in the wet forest ecosystems in Victoria. It undermines the ecological integrity of mountain ash ecosystems, alpine ash ecosystems. Logging in East Gippsland has fundamentally changed the composition of the forest, and so that it is dominated in those lowland areas by tree species which are not edible for animals such as koalas and greater gliders.
So the evidence is clear, and it is compelling to indicate that logging has significantly altered ecosystems and has contributed to the decline of species.”
Professor David Lindenmeyer, Transcript, page 42.
In addition, Environment Justice Australia provided the following evidence:
“Unsustainable extraction of natural resources will continue to drive ecosystem decline in Victoria and cannot be addressed by simply improving current environmental protection regulations or their implementation.
In the case of native timber harvesting in Victoria, for example, the appropriate policy response is to bring forward the cessation of harvesting, particularly following this past summer’s catastrophic fires.”
Environment Justice Australia, Submission Page 25
The lack of a finding about native forest logging’s ecological impact or any recommendation to accelerate Victoria’s transition out of native forest logging is a significant weakness of the majority report.
The finding around logging that “Victoria has the balance right” may reflect the political reality for the Victoria Labor party but does not reflect the ecological reality.
In 2021, as climate change, water shortages and the extinction crisis accelerate, the protection and restoration of remaining natural forests is absolutely vital.
Therefore the following finding and recommendation should have been included in the majority report:
Additional Finding: Native forest logging is a significant driver of habitat loss, ecosystem decline and loss of forest dependent threatened species in Victoria.
Native forest logging is contributing to ecosystem decline by fragmenting forest ecosystems and reducing habitat, reducing diversity and habitat values such as hollow-bearing trees, causing large scale soil disturbance, erosion and weeds, increasing fire frequency and severity and negatively impacting water quality.
Additional Recommendation: In light of the catastrophic impacts of the 2019/20 bushfires, the Victorian Government should bring forward the Victorian Forestry Plan to cease native forest logging in Victoria by 2024.
Amended finding: Only a small proportion of Action Statements for threatened species and communities and potentially threatening processes are in place, despite these being a mandatory requirement under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 (Vic).
Further, even where action statements are in place, they are rarely implemented, monitored or reported on. Lack of adequate funding is a key reason for this.
Amended recommendation: That the Victorian Government ensure, as a matter of urgency, that all threatened species and communities and potentially threatening processes listed under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 (Vic) have Action Statements in place within one year and that significant new funding is allocated to their implementation.
An action plan which identifies priority Action Statements should be developed to facilitate this process.
Ecologist and ecological historian, Vic Jurskis, provided an historical overview on koalas endangered species and koalas.
There are only three mammals that are critically endangered in Victoria today, and none of them are arboreal or forest dependent.
Koalas were naturally a very rare species, because soft young growth is a rare commodity in healthy mature forests, and koalas only lived in forests. They were confined to forests. No explorers, apart from Strzelecki, ever saw koalas, because they did not live in the woodlands and the grassy areas that Europeans sought for agriculture.
So what needs to happen is that we need to restore healthy forests and low sustainable densities of koalas. In the meantime you have got the animal welfare problem of what to do with all the surplus. The idea of translocating them somewhere else in the bush does not work.
All the translocations have always been into areas where there are already koalas. The reason they have gone mad after translocation is because people have excluded fire from the areas where they have translocated koalas. [Vic Jurskis]
Vic Jurskis said
The following recommendations were in the 2021 Inquiry into Ecosystem Decline in Victoria report:
RECOMMENDATION 21: That the Victorian Government consider, as part of its comprehensive review of the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2014, mandating adaptive, variable retention approaches to native timber harvesting in Victorian state forests.
RECOMMENDATION 22: That the Victorian Government work with First Nations experts in Country and fire to examine the impacts of salvage logging on the regeneration of bushfire-impacted forest ecosystems, as well as the impacts on threatened species following a major bushfire event, with a view to incorporating the findings into forestry policy to support forest recovery in the aftermath of major bushfires.
RECOMMENDATION 23: That the Victorian Government review the definitions of forests utilised in forestry regulation and operations. Consideration should be given to expanding the definition of ‘old growth’ to include mature trees and/or forests with more than 10% but less than 50% regrowth.
FINDING 20: The Victorian Forestry Plan strikes the right balance between increasing the conservation of Victorian forests and providing time and support to successfully transition the forestry industry to a more environmentally sustainable, plantation-based supply.
Threatened species
FINDING 21: According to recent research from the Threatened Species Recovery Hub and Victoria’s State of the Environment 2018, native species of flora and fauna are experiencing significant declines in population size and distribution. Species that have already been listed as threatened are not being holistically protected.
FINDING 22: Key threats to native species in Victoria include climate change, changes to fire frequency and intensity, invasive species, land clearing and changes to rivers, wetlands and floodplains.
FINDING 23: It is crucial to prevent further decline in native species—not just for individual species themselves, but for the vast array of ecosystems services they provide.
Chair of the Australian Koala Foundation, Deborah Tabart OAM said if the Government continues to watch habitats go down, then the Koala and particularly some of their very vulnerable populations will be lost to time.
“I am calling on the Minister to use her Ministerial powers under the EPBC Act to protect all Primary and Secondary A habitat throughout the Koala’s entire geographic range where she has the power to do so, and to enact the Koala Protection Act,’’ she said.
“We have had so many people write to AKF this month seeking support to try and stop clearing and often there is nothing to be done, because it has either been approved in the dim dark past or the damage has already been done.”
Deborah Tabart OAM said
The AKF has previously written to the new federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, offering its expertise, scientific and detailed Koala habitat mapping, population data and carefully considered solutions to save the Koala and its habitat, which they have spent over three decades compiling and she has not replied; instead passing it to the Threatened Species Commissioner to reply with platitudes.
To find out more about the Koala Protection Act and Australian Koala Foundation, visit: savethekoala.com
