New England Koala Sanctuary as part of conservation trust
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:30I know exactly where they were. I still know exactly where they'd be.
00:43In an overview, Richard, southeast of Armidale.
00:47So we'll probably resurrect that? Run with that?
00:49Yeah.
00:50And put roughly in place in about 1870 to here.
00:54Yeah.
00:55So we're now all in Armidale, Jimarrake.
00:56Jimarrake.
00:57Yeah.
00:58Yeah.
00:59Yeah.
01:00Yeah.
01:01Yeah.
01:02Yeah.
01:03Yeah.
01:04Yeah.
01:05Yeah.
01:06Yeah.
01:07Yeah.
01:08Yeah.
01:09Yeah.
01:10Yeah.
01:11Yeah.
01:12Yeah.
01:13Yeah.
01:14Yeah.
01:15Yeah.
01:16Yeah.
01:17Yeah.
01:18Yeah.
01:19Yeah.
01:20Yeah.
01:21Yeah.
01:22Yeah.
01:23Yeah.
01:24Yeah.
01:25Yeah.
01:26Yeah.
01:27Good plant, yemmy.
01:28Like there's no offshoots of timber usually over mailden.
01:29Yeah, it's quite an impressive species.
01:31So Peter just said, this is great.
01:33Yeah.
01:34Yeah.
01:35It's good.
01:36It's great here.
01:37Yeah.
01:38It's great.
01:39It's phoot.
02:10comes down. It's where Dummy Creek comes down through.
02:40I saw that before, the little red bits on the ground.
03:11I mean those burnt trees, I've seen it all come through.
03:17The new younger growth coming through, so this is all koala habitat.
03:22Yep, yep, yep. Usually the maturity comes on through.
03:27Yeah, yeah. Just keep talking about young, young, really well there.
03:32So, you know, we've got a lot of young koalas coming through.
03:38So, you know, we've got a lot of work to do to actually get all this up to speed.
03:55All like old timber yards, probably.
03:58Yeah, just walk past me.
04:01So that's all done.
04:04And this is looking so healthy.
04:06Yes.
04:07It's never looked this healthy.
04:08So before the fire, you didn't have the same amount of regrowth?
04:11No, no, no.
04:13And I think, you know, because of the fire, the trees obviously dropped their seeds.
04:18And it's a pretty difficult country to get a complete pig control program.
04:23You know, it's so hard to get all of it done at once, you know.
04:28And the CRC for Invasive Species, I think it's called.
04:32Yep, yep.
04:34A couple of those guys at UNE as well as part of the CRC.
04:37Yep.
04:38So not always, you know, it would be great to get some research done.
04:52What the tender does allow us to do is providing the funds from the state government.
04:57We can put that towards active conservation management for the property.
05:02This was an agreement in perpetuity.
05:04It meant that not only were we preserving that land for our own time,
05:08this was in perpetuity for our successional plans for families and anybody who might come in.
05:14So plus the fact that there's a funding arrangement that comes in each year,
05:19so it means that we can control feral animals and feral plants
05:25and really manage the property as best because from an agricultural point of view,
05:30we can't generate income from this land.
05:32So we're generating income through conservation.
05:35What better way is there to go?
05:37We knew from a lot of, again,
05:40records from people telling us that this was koala habitat
05:44and the koalas were probably unfortunately wiped out probably by bushfire.
05:48There's certainly scratch marks on the trees
05:50and from the old graziers and previous owners,
05:53they've said things like they couldn't sleep at night for the koala noises.
05:57The fact that there is no fence between here
06:00and three or four hundred thousand hectares of National Park Estate
06:04means that if we can be the initiator of bringing koalas back
06:08where they're in a population that they will survive,
06:11that can only be a good thing.
06:13Basically it comes down to a feeling good about conserving something,
06:19but it means that we can actually do something now that's meaningful.
06:22It's basically what a small group of people can do privately
06:26for the benefit of everyone.
06:28There's some fantastic koala habitat here
06:31and there's 11 plus species of koala friendly suitable habitat here,
06:37but it's also a mark of scale.
06:41It's quite a large scale property.
06:43It's a good solid investment in terms of protecting koala habitat
06:46in the Armidale region.
06:48What's lovely is that you see a very well connected landscape
06:53that has all of the attributes, you know, water, protection
06:59and all those other sort of habitat management aspects
07:02that are available here and make it a good property
07:05for koala conservation.
07:07The climate refugium model that shows that, you know,
07:09this will be a place for koalas to go
07:12and may offer them some protection as some of those landscapes
07:16become hotter and hotter.
07:17There are so many other native species and opportunities
07:21for native animals to be able to thrive and survive
07:24in this conservation agreement.
07:25We really cherish the opportunity to be able to protect this
07:29for the long term and, you know, continue to work with the landholders.
07:32One of the great things about working with the Biodiversity Conservation Trust
07:35is that we, you know, we're really at the coalface of delivering support
07:40to a broad range of stakeholders.
07:42You know, so we work closely with the agricultural community,
07:45we work closely with the conservation community
07:47and importantly we work together to improve the outcomes
07:51for biodiversity in private land conservation.
07:55This koala tender is designed to help the NSW Koala Strategy
08:01reach their goal of having doubled koala populations by 2050.