Wood Central can reveal that the NSW government will likely break from the hard left and rethink a push to establish a 176,000-hectare Koala Park amid concerns about building materials and the cost of living crisis.
And whilst Wood Central understands a Great Koala National Park will be established – thus delivering on Minns electoral commitment from the 2023 state election – the park is expected to be much smaller, balancing conserving key koala and glider habitats and sustaining a viable hardwood industry:
“Now, the challenge is resource security to attract investment and innovation in hardwood processing,” according to Maree McCaskill, CEO of Timber NSW, who with Andrew Hurford, Chair of Timber NSW, joined representatives from the CFMEU, the AWU and Forestry Australia’s Acting President, Dr Bill Jackson – author of the 2016 Australia State of Environment Report – in meeting with stakeholders from the NSW government.
It comes after the Daily Telegraph reported that the size of the Koala Park could shrink from 176,000 hectares to 36,000 and 53,000 hectares – which would be added to the existing 136,000 hectares of protected National Park – after new data showed that Koala populations were “stable and thriving,” supporting CSIRO research published by Wood Central last year showing that koala numbers were far higher than previously reported.
Published as part of the CSIRO’s National Koala Monitoring Programme (NKMP), which has, since 2023, used expert data rather than opinion to calculate Koala abundance and disturbance – with the CSIRO now estimating the current population range between 287,830 and 628,010, ten times more than the numbers forecast by the Australian Koala Foundation (between 32,000 and 58,000 in 2021).
In addition to koala numbers – which also reveal that koalas do not meet the classification of endangered status – Wood Central can reveal that the key members of the NSW Labor Party have concerns over the impact of an enlarged koala park on the availability of NSW timber – which could see up to 40% of all hardwood timber removed from the supply chain, crunching housing and driving up the cost of energy.
- For more information about the Great Koala Park, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
