Letter to the Editor: KoaLaMan on the road to Sydney

DEAR News Of The Area,

ON Wednesday 23 July at 3.00 pm a group of us gathered outside the office of Michael Kemp MP in Kempsey to welcome and support KoaLaMan deliver a letter to Mr Kemp.

KoaLaMan is walking from Coffs Harbour to see the Premier in Sydney and is delivering letters to local MPs en route.

He had just walked from Clybucca that morning and still had the energy to get us singing and dancing to his Koalaman song.

Although the mood was uplifting and inspiring for the people who had gathered, both locals and visitors, there was a current of dismay and frustration of the plight of the koala which drove us together on this cold and rainy day.

We felt betrayed on behalf of the koala.

The state government has been promising to establish a Great Koala National Park since the 2019-20 bushfires destroyed about a third of their population and a quarter of their habitat.

They had been put on the endangered list in 2022.

Yet the Minns government, which only recently assured us that a decision was to be made soon, has not even made provision for it in their latest budget.

Meanwhile, logging continues to make incursions into those areas designated for inclusion in a Great Koala National Park, potentially qualifying for World Heritage listing.

The problem is that these incursions are downgrading the high conservation value of these forests and are destroying the corridors that connect them, creating isolated pockets of forest.

This enforced isolation creates many problems, in particular reducing the gene pool, a precursor to extinction.

It leads to immune deficiency making them susceptible to diseases such as chlamydia.

Without the kind of intervention the government has promised, scientists predict they will become extinct by 2050.

Why does this matter?

The koala is an umbrella species, which means that protecting koala habitat also protects other endangered species and biodiversity.

Indeed, it could be argued that we humans also need healthy, biodiverse ecosystems to survive.

In a sense the koala is the canary in the coal mine.

What of the loggers? In brief:

· NSW Forestry Corporation has run at a loss of $70 million in the past 4 years, $30 million this past year alone.

· Unfortunately koalas don’t recognise plantation boundaries and face many serious threats through logging practices, like clear felling.
· Many breaches are being made of the industry’s own regulations.

· There are viable timber alternatives such as hempcrete, sucrete and bamboo which are much faster growing and have less impact on the environment and climate change.

Thus if an orderly and just transition to alternative industries is made, loggers will still have jobs and our unique biodiversity can be saved, itself a source of income for tourism where the koala is an internationally recognised icon.

Regards,
Dr Nona HARVEY,
West Kempsey.