Australia to create a national park for 12,000 koalas

Few animals tug at Australian hearts like the koala. Yet the marsupial, once common along the eastern seaboard, was declared endangered in New South Wales (NSW) in 2022. Habitat loss, climate stress, and disease have driven populations down so far that a parliamentary inquiry warned they could vanish from the state before 2050. The proposed remedy is ambitious: the Great Koala National Park (GKNP), a 475,000-hectare protected area stretching from Kempsey to Grafton and inland to Ebor. If delivered in full, it would stitch together 176,000 hectares of state forests with existing reserves, creating a landscape on par with the Blue Mountains or Kosciuszko.

The plan, formally unveiled in September, represents a once-in-a-generation conservation decision. Australian Premier Chris Minns justified choosing the largest option, insisting “koalas will go extinct in the wild by 2050 unless we make this decision.” The announcement came with a moratorium on logging across the proposed boundaries, immediate funding for worker transition, and a promise of new infrastructure to draw tourists. To environmentalists it was a long-awaited breakthrough. To timber workers it was a crushing blow.

The conservation case

Drone surveys conducted earlier this year estimate the region holds more than 12,000 koalas, among the most significant populations in the state. The park is also home to 66 other threatened fauna species, from greater gliders to glossy black cockatoos, and dozens of rare plants including spider orchids. Protecting intact native forests offers not only biodiversity gains but also climate benefits. Forests allowed to grow beyond harvest rotations lock up more carbon, a feature the government hopes to monetize through the federal Improved Native Forest Management method.

The scale is critical. Ecologists argue that scattered parks are not enough to sustain viable populations of wide-ranging species. By linking fragments of habitat, the GKNP would create refuges resilient to fire, drought, and warming temperatures. Traditional Owners, particularly the Gumbaynggirr and Dunghutti peoples, emphasize its cultural value as well. For them koalas, or dunggiirr, are bound to laws and Dreaming stories that cannot be passed down if the animals disappear.

The politics of preservation

The Labor government first promised the park in 2015. But progress has been halting, slowed by union resistance and fears of regional job losses. The new announcement follows two years of criticism that logging not only continued in the proposed footprint but intensified. Environmental groups accused the government of degrading critical habitat even as it campaigned on saving it. The moratorium finally halts such operations, though hardwood plantations and private native forestry remain unaffected.

Politics played its part. A decision by Essential Energy, the state’s largest electricity distributor, to phase out wooden power poles last year weakened the rationale for maintaining native hardwood supply. Ninety percent of NSW’s power poles once came from the Mid North Coast. Without that market, the government concluded that persisting with native forest logging meant “the worst of all worlds” – ecological decline without lasting economic security.

The timber industry’s reckoning

The human cost is real. About 300 jobs are expected to be lost, and mill owners describe themselves as devastated. Brook Waugh, who employs 35 workers at his family-run mill, told The Sydney Morning Herald, “To say I’m devastated is just an understatement.” The Australian Workers Union accused the government of putting “the desire of the green lobby ahead of the workers it was formed to assist.” Business continuity payments are being offered to affected mills, with hopes of redirecting skills into plantations or other industries.

The economics of native forest logging, however, are shaky. Analysts point out that the state forestry corporation has been running losses of tens of millions of dollars, subsidized by taxpayers, while also paying fines for environmental breaches. A majority of timber in NSW already comes from plantations. A recent study argued that shifting subsidies entirely to plantation production would not cause net job losses, given worker skills are transferable.

Tourism and carbon credits

The government is pitching the GKNP as both ecological reserve and economic engine. Environment Minister Penny Sharpe envisions overseas visitors ranking it alongside Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef. An additional A$60 million is earmarked for walking trails, campgrounds, and adventure precincts. Backers claim regional tourism could generate far more jobs than logging ever sustained.

Financing, though, remains uncertain. The Minns government wants the park’s forests registered under a carbon credit scheme. That would allow the state to sell Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), helping fund management and monitoring. Critics argue such credits may fail “additionality” tests, since protection would have happened anyway, making them meaningless as offsets. If federal approval lags, legislation to formally gazette the park could be delayed until at least 2026.

An emblematic struggle

The debate encapsulates broader tensions in Australian land policy: between extractive industries and conservation, between regional jobs and global environmental commitments. Victoria and Western Australia have already moved to end native forest logging. NSW is now edging in that direction, though Labor’s dependence on crossbench votes makes passage uncertain.

For conservationists, the GKNP would be the state’s biggest environmental achievement in decades. “Conservation wins don’t get much bigger than this,” said Victoria Jack of the Wilderness Society in a statement. 

For the timber industry, it represents abandonment. 

For koalas, whose furry faces adorn tourist brochures even as their numbers collapse, it may be the difference between survival and extinction.

Header image: Koala in captivity. Image by Till Niermann.