‘I need your help to save koalas’: how Australians came together to build wildlife corridors

In 2016, a friend called Linda Sparrow about a 400m stretch of koala trees on the western edge of Bangalow, a small regional town in northern New South Wales.

The landscape in the region had long been logged by loggers and farmers, and there were precious few eucalyptus trees left to provide shelter for koalas looking for food or shelter.

“My friend called one day saying, ‘Linda, I need your help to save some koalas.’ And I just went, ‘Of course I do,'” says Sparrow.

Until then, there were only two recorded sightings of the koala in Bangalow. By the end of the enthusiastic community campaign, people were actively watching, the number of views had increased and the share of trees had been saved.

Then Sparrow had an idea: why not continue?

The following year she co-founded Bangalow Koalas and the “little balls of fuzz” have taken over her life. The group, supported by the World Wildlife Fund and recognized by the World Economic Forum, held its first planting in 2019. With the help of private landowners who have volunteered to participate, it has gone on to plant more than 377,000 trees throughout the region. Its target is to reach 500,000 by 2025.

Koalas on Australia’s east coast are increasingly at risk of extinction altogether. In 2022, the species was officially listed as endangered with the Australian government at the time pledging $50 million to help reverse the decline.

The decision came as a shock to few. It was a long-awaited decision that was completely preventable – koalas were first listed as vulnerable in 2012 and, in the 10 years since, have faced numerous ongoing threats, including the spread of chlamydia , catastrophic fires and habitat loss. Part of this habitat loss is due to logging, which continues in koala habitat in New South Wales, despite the state government promising to protect areas important to the species.

Koala corridors planted by groups such as Bangalow Koalas – whose funding ends at the end of the year – aim to help solve some of this challenge by connecting fragmented habitat with stretches of eucalyptus trees.

Due to the nature of private ownership, the group must rely on individual landowners to agree to participate and volunteer their properties. Although they have never had a shortage of willing volunteers, the situation means that the group must work piecemeal, taking into account the specific area where they are planting. In some areas, where an ancient rainforest once stood, they plant a mixture of koala trees and rainforest plants. In the west where the land opens up, the focus is on eucalypts.

Sparrow says the benefits aren’t just limited to koalas. Walking through the dim light at one of the earliest sites her group worked on, she says rediscovering a barren landscape has ripple effects for walleyes, birds, lizards, insect life and even humans.

“We’re not just connecting and creating a koala wildlife corridor and a fragmented habitat, we’re connecting communities,” says Sparrow. “Landcare groups, indigenous communities, schools — they come in all the time to do planting.”

People have traveled from as far north as Toowoomba and Brisbane to enter, she says, and as far south as Sydney and even Melbourne. Once, after the disastrous Black Summer wildfires, two cabin crews from San Francisco flew in to help plant.

Other groups have also looked to Bangalow Koalas as a model. When Dirk Jansen, an IT manager, moved to Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in 2016, he kept hearing his neighbors ask “where have all the koalas gone”.

“The habitat on the Mornington Peninsula is very fragmented,” says Jansen. “They might have farmland in the middle, or housing, or major roads, or highways.”

With more than two-thirds of the peninsula’s koala habitat on private property, Jansen says it has been “death by a thousand cuts” as small parts of the area have been progressively cleared over time. To address this, he asked Sparrow for advice on forming his land stewardship group, which held the first planting of 4,000 trees in 2020.

“We’ve been able to scale up to 25,000 plants that we plant each season,” says Jansen. “From a volunteer standpoint, that’s what we aim for every year.”

Dr Edward Narayan is a senior lecturer in animal science from the University of Queensland whose research focuses on stress responses in animals, particularly in wild koala populations. He says this reforestation work is important to help reduce pressure on the species.

His research, and that of doctoral students, has found that koalas living on the urban fringes are most at risk of stress, with many moving into residential areas in search of safe havens – with all the risks that entails.

“Koalas are a very interesting wild creature,” he says. “You have basic stressors from their ecology like disease, but there are new stressors like dog attacks and vehicle crashes.

“These are immediate stressors. When you talk about stress, you also have the state of the landscape – things like habitat loss, land clearing, and long-term things like heat stress or wildfires.”

Narayan says grassroots work by community groups is the “necessary first step to healing the landscape”, but it’s also essential that governments tackle climate change “otherwise you’re only dealing with one piece of the puzzle”.

If governments don’t take the risk seriously and fail to take meaningful action to reduce CO2 emissions, he says the vital work of communities on the ground will eventually be overwhelmed. The New South Wales government has set aside $190 million for a plan to double koala numbers through the restoration of 25,000 hectares of koala habitat in the first phase, and the federal government maintains a fund of $76.9 million to support similar work .

Such programs are a good start, but during the Black Summer fires, more than 7.5 m2 hectares of eucalyptus forest burned and the Australian economy remains heavily dependent on fossil fuel production. The country ranks among the world’s largest exporters of LNG and coal, and is still allowing the development of new coal mines and gas fields.

“You know, I have two kids,” says Narayan. “This is about the future we are leaving them. Can you imagine Australia without koalas? I do not think so. It would be as if we didn’t have the Opera House or the Harbor Bridge. It’s built into who we are as Australians.”

According to the World Wildlife Fund, more than 60,000 koalas were killed during the Black Summer bushfires, an example Sparrow says illustrates how it’s already affecting their work – and how she hopes the tree plantings can inspire others to take further action.

“You know, people come to me and say they feel so hopeless. They say, ‘with everything going on, how can I have an impact?’ Then they come here and plant a tree, see that they’re actually doing something,” she says.

“My hope is that maybe then they start thinking, ‘What else can I do?'”