NSW’s 176,000-hectare Koala Park is now in “no man’s land” and could face a multi-million-dollar black hole, with the management and future funding of the park contingent on the state government convincing the Albanese Government to include the park in its controversial Improved Native Forest Management Method (INFM model) for carbon credits.
“As it stands, the park is still a state forest managed by Forestry Corporation that has a moratorium placed over it for no harvesting activities until the park is gazetted mid-2026,” according to Maree McCaskill, CEO of Timber NSW. “Forestry Corporation is the land manager, and until now, has used royalties from native forestry to maintain trails needed to manage forest fires and floods. By contrast, the cost to manage a National Park is solely taxpayer-funded and is much higher than that of a State Forest.”
To date, more than $140 million has been allocated by the NSW Government to establish the park—an amount that, according to Steve Dobbyns, Executive Officer of Forest & Wood Communities Australia will be quickly absorbed once the new park is fully operational: “The annual cost to taxpayers to manage the 2million hectares of State forests is around $20 million, which works out to be $10 per hectare,” Dobbyns said. “The last time you could check the NPWS Annual Report (about 2019), before it was hidden behind the veil of the Department of Planning and Environment, the NSW Government was paying around $850 million to manage its National Parks, which equates to $121 per hectare.”
This black financial hole has already led the Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) to flag that the “bizarre decision” by the Albanese government to prioritise the NSW method for the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme was not independent, honest or based on scientific merit:
“Comments by the NSW Premier that he “expect(s) it to come through” and the funding for the Park’s creation “is dependent on the successful registration of the INFM method” have confirmed widely-held suspicions regarding the politicisation of the process by which new carbon methods are made,” according to Diana Hallam, CEO of the national peak body for forest products. “Worse, the Premier’s assertion that he expects the INFM to be registered makes it clear the legislated gateways, which are meant to stop sham ACCU methods, can be manipulated, and undue influence has occurred in this instance.”
Yesterday, Wood Central revealed that vast tracts of working forest on NSW’s North Coast will be permanently closed under a supersized Great Koala National Park, after Premier Chris Minns confirmed the creation of a 176,000-hectare reserve, which, combined with existing national parks, will form a 476,000-hectare conservation area — the largest in the world dedicated to koala protection. “Koalas are at risk of extinction in the wild in NSW – that’s unthinkable,” Minns told the media. “The Great Koala National Park is about turning that around. We’ve listened carefully and we’re making sure workers, businesses and communities are supported every step of the way.”
