Ashley Love, Member of NPA and Bellingen Environment Centre
The history of community campaigns to protect koala habitat in the Bellingen-Coffs Harbour areas goes back over 50 years. In the 1970’s Coffs City Council supported residents’ efforts to protect koala habitat at Roberts Hill on the western edge of the city.
Early threats from residential development and logging
Conservation campaigns for protection of koala habitat against clearing for residential developments were frequent in Sawtell and other areas. The campaigns escalated in the early 1990’s at places like Chaelundi and included a major escalation and halt to logging in Pine Creek State Forest, where the conflict continued through most of the 1990’s.
The Pine Creek campaign standoff eventually morphed into a compromise – putting half of the state forest into Bongil Bongil National Park and continued logging of the remaining half and associated plantations.
Monitoring in Bongil Bongil National Park since has shown the koala population has stabilised since the creation of the park, but has not shown evidence of recovery towards earlier recorded population levels. More habitat protection is clearly needed to encourage recovery of koalas in this area.
Scientific assessment
Calls for increased protection for koala habitat grew dramatically during the first ten years of this century, leading in 2010 to the National Parks Association Coffs Harbour/Bellingen branch, Bellingen Environment Centre and other local environment groups pooling their resources to commission a preliminary assessment of koala populations on the Mid–North Coast between the Macleay and the Richmond Rivers.
The assessment was undertaken by experienced ecologist David Scotts (ref 1) (of “Key Habitats and Corridors” fame) who applied his extensive local knowledge as well as using a wide range of inputs, including species records and models, vegetation and disturbance and development mapping, and talking extensively to local residents.
Scotts identified 26 koala sub-populations in this area, 22 of which were assessed to be in various states of decline. Whilst community members were reviewing the results of the assessment the status of the koala was lifted from a common to a threatened species.
In response, the groups came forward with a proposal for a large koala conservation area that was recognised as comprising amongst the best wild koala meta-populations in the world. These were the Guy Fawkes to Coffs Harbour and the Bellinger–Nambucca–Macleay koala meta-populations made up of four regional populations that consisted of 14 subpopulations (Figure 1).
The NPA then, initially through the work of Dr Oisín Sweeney, took on the role of promoting the outcomes of the Scotts’ work and extending similar studies throughout the rest of the North Coast, resulting in a 2015 publication of a report on koala conservation proposals for the North Coast (ref 2), which were included in the 2017 NPA 50 new parks proposals (ref 3).
Promotion of the report and proposal
Fortunately, the proposal was taken up by the Nature Conservation Council and included as one of fourteen new park proposals in its environmental wish list released in September 2014 prior to the NSW election in March 2015.
Opposition Shadow Minister for Environment Luke Foley at the time said he read the Nature Conservation Council park proposals, liked the concept of a large reserve for koalas on the North Coast and chased the authors of the proposal down at a meeting in Casino in December 2014 seeking more information. Foley returned in January 2015 to Coffs Harbour to launch the Labor Party’s support for a proposal for “a Great Koala National Park”. The proposal was also strongly supported by Felicity Wade, then a staffer to Foley and up until recently, head of LEAN (Labor Environmental Action Network) where she continued her strong support including through successive Labor Party annual conferences and elections until Labor was finally elected in 2023.
Embedded in the community proposal was the concept of potential World Heritage listing for these koala populations which adjoined and, in some cases, overlapped with existing and tentatively listed Gondwana rainforest World Heritage areas. That the koala meets the relevant World Heritage criteria for Threatened Species (Criteria X) to be: “of outstanding universal value for conservation or science”, is almost a certainty. Luke Foley had the same idea, and we had all taken notice of what had been achieved with the Giant Panda in China with the establishment of large reserves for the Panda, World Heritage listing and recent downgrading of the species from endangered to threatened.
The Announcement
Now, two years and five months after the 2023 election and after a lot of assessment, protesting about ongoing logging, negotiating and lobbying by interest groups, the announcement of the proposed Great Koala National Park was made by Premier Chris Minns on Sunday the 7 September 2025, in Bongil Bongil National Park, accompanied by Environment Minister Penny Sharpe, Forestry Minister Tara Moriarty, and Minister for the North Coast Janelle Saffin.
Strong Government support for the community proposal will lead to creation of one of the three most important conservation reserve complexes for endangered species in NSW (with the Blue Mountains-Wollemi and Kosciuszko) according to NPWS assessment reports, and will place the Environment Minister Penny Sharpe and the Minn’s Government alongside the former Wran and Carr Governments as significant environmental reformers for the North Coast.
Next steps and future risks
Before getting too excited there are still cautions. Firstly, the Government’s attempts to claim carbon credits for the park is a first and has some risks. There are also some faults and omissions that crept in during the long negotiation process, including one unexplained HCV forest omission, exclusion so far of the community favoured site for a visitor centre and failure to consider any plantation areas despite many with strong contentions and the precedence of at least sixteen national parks reserves in the North of the state containing areas of former tree plantations.
With regard to potential World Heritage nomination there is a further hurdle that a nomination of the local koalas for World Heritage listing must clear, that is to demonstrate the integrity of the conservation proposal to provide for recovery and management of the koala populations well into the future. Even with the proposed protection of native forests on public land there will still be many threats to the 14 local koala populations in the proposed Great Koala National Park.
In the Bellinger valley in particular, the continued clear felling of plantations with known koalas is an issue for population integrity, which is added to by the fact that many of the original native forests on these areas were dominated by lowland rainforests, now endangered ecological communities and prescribed for recovery actions.
The conservation and expected ecotourism and economic gains from the Great Koala National Park will be enormous. Nevertheless, we must be prepared to continue to improve our management and recovery of the koala right across our local landscapes to ensure these gains are maximised and consolidated on the Mid North Coast.
The role of NPA staff and members has been at the forefront of working towards the establishment of the Great Koala National Park.
References
- Scotts, D, 2013 . Conserving Koala populations of the New South Wales upper mid-north coast: Preliminary mapping of populations as a basis for further survey, research and planning. Report prepared for the North Coast Environment Council, Bellingen Environment Centre, Clarence Environment Centre, Nambucca Valley Conservation Association and NSW National Parks Association. https://npansw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Conserving-Koala-populations-of-the-New-South-Wales-upper-mid-north-coast-Scotts-2013.pdf
- Love ,A, Sweeney, O , 2015. “A Blueprint for a Comprehensive Reserve System for Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) on the North Coast of New South Wales” NPA Sydney. https://npansw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/blueprint_v2.pdf
3. NPA NSW 2017. 50 Park Proposals. https://npansw.org.au/50-park-proposals/
