Jonas for Bellingen Environment Centre.

Last week (29^th May 21) a group of locals participated in a second koala survey. Both surveys have found koala scats in Compartment 27 and 23.

Forestry has been down this ridge recently and were doing some drainage marking, about 800m down on the old snig track is a grey gum with a horizontal bar in fresh pink paint the tree had old a fresh scratches. Under this tree we found 7 scats, under the tree next to it we found a further 27 scats.

This scat collection seemed to indicate that two animals were involved as some scats was smaller. Possibly a mother with a large joey.

While Forestry had marked this tree recently there was nothing to indicate that they had collected any of the scats as they were scattered around at random in the leaf litter.  

Below this location and to the north we found two more koala records. One quite small Tallowood had 34 scats. 6 more scat were found in the vicinity of a medium sized iron bark. 

We believe this area would turn out more records with another search as the koala habitat continued to be good further down the ridge line.

The second survey was done on western boundary trail, where there's plenty of grey gums with fresh scratches. We found 1 scat under a grey gum then a further 19 scat under a second grey gum. From here we searched in all directions and were unable to find any more.