CLEAR-CUTTING KOALA COUNTRY

More than 3000sq.km of forests on NSW's Mid North Coast have been earmarked for the Great Koala National Park. But there's still work to be done before this proposed reserve becomes the safe haven koalas desperately need.

- LIZ GINIS

ASHLEY LOVE IS a bear of a man: tall and solid with a mop of white-grey hair. He's also the founding father of the proposed Great Koala National Park (GKNP), although eliciting information from him about the park is akim to spotting its namesake nestled in a tree during daylight - nigh on impossible.

By Ashley's own admission, he is only one person in a colony of committed conservationists who have, for decades, been fighting for the koalas of the Mid North Coast of New South Wales.

"Local conservationists were campaigning to protect koala habitat back in the 1970s," Ashley says. "But it's taken 50 years of hard graft, and a recent change in classification of the koala - from vulnerable to endangered - to finally protect the most important koala habitat in the world."

In February 2022, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the iconic marsupial was classified as endangered on Australia's east coast, with reports revealing up to 62 per cent of NSW's population had been lost since 2001. Queensland's population crashed by an estimated 50 per cent over the same period.

At the time of the classification, conservationists and scientists declared the endangered listing as an imperative turning point for koalas.

"Koalas have gone from no listing, to being listed as vulnerable, then endangered, within a decade," said WWFAustralia conservation scientist Dr Stuart Blanch. "That is a shockingly fast decline. The decision [to list koalas as an endangered species] is welcome, but it won't stop them from sliding towards extinction unless it's accompanied by stronger laws and landholder incentives to protect their forest homes.