MEDIA RELEASE 11 December 2025

In her media release of 11 December 2025 Environment Minister Penny Sharpe states

The NSW Government has completed its first comprehensive statewide koala survey, providing the most accurate picture to date of where koalas live and how populations are distributed across the state.

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Populations in NSW continue to face significant risks, including habitat loss and fragmentation, climate impacts, disease and vehicle strikes. These threats are expected to intensify over coming decades, underscoring the importance of protecting key habitat and wildlife corridors.

Now that the NSW Government has undertaken new modelling that identifies key koala habitat, they need to stop logging it and ensure it is protected from clearing, according to North East Forest Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

Logged preferred Koala feed trees in key koala habitat in Braemar SF

“If this Government is fair dinkum about reducing the threats to Koalas’ continued survival then they must stop logging preferred Koala feed trees in key Koala habitat on public land.

“The Government’s surveys found that higher numbers of koalas are likely to be found in areas with taller healthy feed trees.

“Our surveys found that in the proposed Richmond River Koala Parks, Koalas preferentially use feed trees over 30 cm diameter, that take over 90 years to grow.

“The have just finished logging key Koala habitat in Braemar State Forest despite the abundant evidence that it supported an exceptional population of Koalas. We have pleaded with Penny Sharpe on numerous occasions, and even resorted to taking the Forestry Corporation to court in a failed attempt to protect it.  

“The new koala model once again identifies Braemar as having amongst the highest occupancy and density of Koalas, though the Government already knew this, but didn’t care.

“Back in 2020 the NSW Government’s Koala Habitat Suitability Model identified these compartments in Braemar State Forest as being high quality Koala habitat. The recent model just confirmed this.

“This Koala population was decimated in the 2019 wildfires, but was slowly recovering until the NSW Government allowed most of their preferred feed trees to be logged.

“It is not just Braemar, the NSW Government is currently actively logging forests that the new model identifies as having very high densities of Koalas in Gilgurry, Ewingar, Kalateenee and Kerewong State Forests, and has numerous additional areas scheduled for logging in the near future.

“It is great that the NSW Government has announced their intent to protect 12,000 Koalas in the Great Koala National Park, but this is only 4% of the 274,000 koalas they now estimate inhabit New South Wales.

“They need to do a lot more if they are serious about reducing the threats to Koalas’ continued survival, including by protecting all medium to high density Koala habitat on State Forests.

“Creating the Richmond River Koala Parks would be a logical first step”, Mr. Pugh said.