Open letter to Premier Minns and the NSW Government
January 10, 2025.
IT IS PAST TIME FOR THE MINNS GOVERNMENT TO STOP LOGGING THE GREAT KOALA NATIONAL PARK. THEY MUST HONOUR THEIR COMMITMENT TO PROTECT IT.
The Minns’ Government was elected on a promise to save Koalas and create the Great Koala National Park, but instead they have increased logging, 21 months later they have logged 7,185 hectares of the park, 8.4% of its loggable area, and refuse to stop. This likely encompasses the homes of over 500 Koalas, along with another 37 Threatened Species.
In January 2015 the NSW ALP opposition leader Luke Foley first promised, if elected, to create the 315,000 hectare Great Koala National Park (GKNP), incorporating 175,000 ha of State Forests and 140,000 ha of existing reserves. This commitment was also taken to the 2019 election.
For the 2023 election the NSW ALP also committed $80 million to create an iconic GKNP protecting approximately 20 per cent of the wild koala population in NSW, the catch was that there would first be an assessment of the 176,000 ha of State Forest.
The Forestry Corporation have no intent to stop and the Minns’ Government has refused repeated requests to implement a moratorium, phase-out strategy or protect core Koala habitat, choosing instead to encourage logging. Far from protecting the GKNP, they are accelerating its degradation.
It took 8 months to commence the assessment. Conservation groups participated on the Community Advisory Panel on the promise that the assessment would be completed by the end of July 2024 and the Minns Government would decide areas to be included in the final GKNP by the
end of 2024.
While the assessment was not completed until early November, conservation groups were still assured a Cabinet decision would be made in December 2024.
Now we are told a decision will be made early in 2025. Meanwhile, almost ten years after the ALP committed to protecting the full GKNP, and 21 months after the election of the Minns Government, the logging of the GKNP and core Koala habitat continues, with no commitment as to when they will stop logging the areas the assessment has identified as having amongst the highest densities of Endangered Koalas and Greater Gliders.
A review of Forestry Corporation logging history, harvesting plans and satellite images identifies the net areas of native forest logged within the proposed GKNP as:
20,630 ha logged in 98 months since ALP’s 2015 commitment to protect the GKNP, until the March 2023 election
7,185 ha logged in 21 months since the election of the Minns Government in 2023.
It is evident that under the Minns Government logging has greatly accelerated within the boundary of the GKNP, with the area logged increasing from 1,968 ha in the 12 months before the election, to 3,285 ha in the 12 months after the election, with another 3,900 ha logged in just the past 9 months. Since they were elected the Minns Government has logged 8.4% of the loggable area of the GKNP. It’s being logged more than 60% faster by Labor than under the Coalition.
While the environmental assessment shows the whole proposal should be protected as one of NSW’s great national parks, we still have no idea how much will be, and how much more degradation the ALP will allow until then.
It is past time for the Minns’ Government to stop the logging and fulfill their original promise to create a world class Great Koala National Park.
