00:00 Australia aims to create by 2025 a great koala national park by merging over 1,200 square
00:08 miles of national park and public forest land in New South Wales.
00:12 But environmentalists and local forest advocates warn the best koala feed trees and habitats
00:18 could be gone by then.
00:20 They say native forest logging has increased in the area.
00:25 There's been a massive expansion and intensification of logging in some of the most biodiverse
00:30 areas of the great koala national park.
00:34 Forest advocate Mark Graham believes the national park plans are driving that increase and the
00:39 forestry industry is trying to grab the resources before logging is banned.
00:44 That's quite sinister because the harm that's done here will take a long while to repair
00:50 and in some respects it might never repair.
00:54 Logging could roughly treble in the next six months inside the national park area from
00:58 levels seen in 2021 to 2022.
01:01 That's according to Reuters' calculations of data provided by the state's forestry corporation.
01:07 Stuart Blanche, an Australian conservation scientist for the World Wide Fund for Nature
01:11 Australia identifies koala feed trees from freshly felled logs.
01:17 This logging truck has got some big old trees on it, maybe 100 years old, including Tullowood,
01:22 which is a great tree for koalas and the state government is allowing them to be chopped
01:27 down while they're considering making a great koala national park.
01:31 It doesn't make sense.
01:32 They should create the great koala national park and while they do that, stop these koala
01:37 feed trees being logged.
01:40 Koalas are an endangered species in New South Wales and they're estimated to be extinct
01:44 in the wild in the state by 2050 if no action is taken.
01:49 In recent months, the state says it stopped logging in over a hundred koala hubs throughout
01:54 state forests in the proposed great koala national park.
01:58 But these hubs just cover under five percent of the forests being assessed for potential
02:03 protection.
02:04 The state's environment minister, Penny Sharp, said it would try to get details about the
02:08 koala park finalised as soon as possible, but cited a commitment to working with the
02:14 local communities and industries.
02:16 We weren't just going to press a stop altogether straight away and without any plan for what
02:22 happens with those communities and without a proper assessment of the forests.
02:26 The timber industry is left questioning its future too.
02:30 Logging in and around the proposed koala park area is estimated to be the largest in New
02:34 South Wales, with the timber industry employing almost 9,000 people statewide.
02:40 James Euster is CEO of Australian Forest Products Association New South Wales.
02:46 If we were to lose our native forestry industry in New South Wales, we're really just pushing
02:51 the supply of that timber overseas to other jurisdictions where they have much weaker
02:56 environmental standards.
02:59 For Graham, the local forest advocate, a ban on logging is essential.
03:03 He also hopes the government and community can commit to restoring harmed areas by replanting
03:08 trees and managing invasive weed species.
03:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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