More than 4,000 koalas have been found across 67,300 hectares of bushland and forestland on the fringe of Newcastle, in what is one of the most consequential surveys in many years. Part of research conducted by the University of Newcastle and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which surveyed 208 sites, the researchers found more than 4,357 koalas on Newcastle’s outskirts.
The findings include a booming colony of 290 Koalas discovered in the Sugarloaf Conservation Area – an hour’s drive from Newcastle. Reported on NBN television—an affiliate of the Channel 9 network, researchers used heat-seeking drones to discover hundreds of koalas in the National Park, which until July 2007 was part of NSW’s State Forest. In total, seven national parks were sampled (about 10% of each) with multiple night surveys, and a statistical model extrapolated these counts across the landscape. Maria National Park had the highest density (about 521 koalas per 3,350 hectares), while fire-affected parks from the 2019-20 fires hosted roughly two-thirds fewer koalas.
“It’s a world-first method for not only detecting Koalas, which are very cryptic and hard to find in the wild, but also counting them,” according to Dr Ryan Witt from the University of Newcastle. “We can (use the drone) to detect if it’s a Koala in less than two minutes.”
Speaking to NBN Television, Darren Grover from the World Wildlife Fund Australia said the new technique is “the holy grail for counting koala numbers,” with the WWF looking to double Koala populations located along the East Coast of Australia by 2050. “To do that, we need to know where we are starting from and how we are tracking toward our target.”
This week, Wood Central spoke to Maree McCaskill, CEO of Timber NSW, who welcomed the colony, located close to former coup sites: “The key is to invest in drone surveys—for Koalas and Gliders—to understand populations in both State Forests and National Parks areas. It’s encouraging that populations have fared better during the Black Summer fires than previously feared.”
“The more we survey, the more we find,” McCaskill said, adding that the 2024 report by the CSIRO estimates that Koala numbers – classified as endangered in Queensland, NSW and ACT since 2022 – could be as much as 10 times larger than previously forecast. Just like the colony of koalas found at Bootawa Dam near Taree recently on an area specifically planted by Forestry Corporation for the local water authority, this colony was not thought to have survived the bushfires in 2019/20 and they did.”
“CSIRO’s National Koala Monitoring Programme (NKMP) relies on expert data and estimates that current populations range from 287,830 to 628,010 (an admittedly large margin) is about ten times larger than the forecast by the Australian Koala Foundation (32,000 to 58,000 after the Black Summer fires. “In effect, Koala numbers are now higher than in 2012 (forecast to be 144,000 to 605,000), when Koala populations were classified as “vulnerable” and not “endangered,” she said.
Koala numbers are “high and stable” in NSW forests.
Last year, Wood Central reported that koala numbers are “high and stable” in NSW forests, with large populations thriving in public forests in and around timber harvesting. That is according to new research published by Dr Brad Law, the principal research scientist at the NSW Department of Primary Industries, and supported by Leroy Gonsalves, Traecey Brassil and Isobel Kerr.
Published in April 2024, Broad-scale acoustic monitoring of koala populations suggests metapopulation stability, but varying below rate, in the face of major disturbances and climate extremes, has, for the first time, used passive acoustic monitoring to analyse populations in state forests now earmarked for the Great Koala National Park. According to Dr Law’s research, “regulated timber harvesting in state forests did not affect the trend of (koalas) either metric nor did land tenure,” with state forests (where timber harvesting is permitted) or national parks having little impact on the koala population. The findings come after a 7-year study between 2015 and 2021, covering more than 224 sites spread across more than 8.5 million hectares of forest area.
Capturing the 2019/20 Black Summer Fires, the study reports that whilst Koalas are cryptic, “acoustic sampling over many thousands of hours, combined with semi-automated call recognition, proved exceptionally effective at detecting the species,” with high precision: “Occupancy was high over an extensive area of habitat,” the research said, with “the stable trend maintained despite a severe drought that led to mega-fires burning about 30% of their habitat in 2019.”
- To learn more about the National Koala Monitoring Programme and current population levels, visit the CSIRO website.
