‘Endangered’ Koalas welcomed but not enough

While Koala advocates have welcomed the Australian government’s decision to list the marsupial as vulnerable in some parts of Australia, they have criticised the move for excludes some states.

The minority Labor government’s Environment Minister Tony Burke said today that at-risk koala populations in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory would be included on the national list of threatened species.

It means developers will have to account for koala listings when making building applications.

“If someone wants to make a development there is a tougher hurdle as a result of a species being endangered,” Mr Burke told ABC Radio.

Australian Koala Foundation spokeswoman Deborah Tabart said she had been waiting for a decision since 1996, when the Australian government’s chief advisory body on threatened species first considered the plight of koalas.

“It’s a victory for Queensland and NSW and I am relieved,” Ms Tabart said.

Adding that she was disappointed populations in Victoria were not included.

Acting on the recommendation of a Senate Inquiry, instigated by then Australian Greens Party Senator Bob Brown last year,the recommendation is contrary  to the position of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee.

That group has claimed the koala should not be listed as not enough information has been collected about the national decline of koala populations.

Australian Greens environment spokesperson Senator Larissa Waters said; “It would have made more sense to give the koala a national listing, instead of waiting for koala populations in South Australia and Victoria to fall into decline without protection, like those in Queensland and New South Wales.

Ms Tabart said Koala numbers in Victoria’s Grampians National Park, in the state’s west, and at Mount Macedon, north-west of Melbourne, were declining.

The Wilderness Society said the at-risk listings were a “welcome first step” to greater protection of koalas, but was concerned about declining numbers in Victoria’s Strzelecki Ranges, in South Gippsland, where logging is occurring.

However, Mr Burke said in some areas of Victoria and South Australia, there were large populations of koalas that were eating themselves out of their habitats.

Environmental organisations Friends of the Earth and Friends of Gippsland Bush both criticised Mr Burke’s failure to list Gippsland’s Strzelecki Ranges koala as endangered or vulnerable.

“All the evidence is pointing to a very bleak future for the Strzelecki Koala, which has lost 50 per cent of its habitat in the past decade due to logging and fire.

“If this habitat loss is not endangering the Strzelecki koala, then the Minister’s view must be very blinkered,” said Friends of the Earth spokesperson Anthony Amis.